


delirium in the firelight

by crinkledpages



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Brief mentions of suicide, Ghosts are briefly mentioned, Homebody!Hao, Implied one-sided Soonyoung/Minghao, M/M, Tinder Cutie!Gyu, tinder au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27231928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinkledpages/pseuds/crinkledpages
Summary: Minghao just wants to remain stuck in his comfortable, homebody lifestyle. But sophomore year rolls around, and his best friend Soonyoung decides that a change is a long time coming. Cue a forced download of Tinder, an exchange of texts, and Minghao is convinced that he's the boy of his dreams.Except that he's not only the sweet, gorgeous talker he makes himself out to be, and Minghao finds himself going down and down the rabbit hole that is Kim Mingyu and realises there's no climbing out (he isn't sure if he wants to climb out).
Relationships: Kim Mingyu/Xu Ming Hao | The8, Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi & Xu Ming Hao | The8
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41
Collections: SVT Fear Exchange





	delirium in the firelight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mingowow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mingowow/gifts).



> Hello, my dear giftee, @mingowow! Happy Halloween!
> 
> Firstly, I sincerely hope that I didn't botch your prompt, and that some small part of you likes it. It was fun getting to write gyuhao, but I won't lie – this prompt was personally a c h a l l e n g e.
> 
> For the 'brief mentions of suicide' part, it's when the characters are having a conversation, and it starts at this part: “How many have thrown themselves off of here?” He whispered.", and the talk ends after 9-10 paragraphs, so you can skip to reading from this part: "He lifted him and set him back onto solid ground."
> 
> With all that being said, here is dating app!prompt gyuhao, and I hope you enjoy:)

Minghao was always certain that when he died, it would be on a day that was sweltering hot, in mid-text or mid-game, maybe a cup of coffee somewhere nearby, if not next to him. In summary, he would die an ordinary death, doing something ordinary, on a well, ordinary day. 

You’re so dramatic, his mom had said when he’d come across an odd Halloween-themed personality quiz (which character in a horror movie are you?). One of the questions had been: ‘how would you picture your very dramatic death?’ Minghao had actually given the exact same answer. 

“You seem to have thought about this a lot,” his mom muttered, a little surprised, but marred with that veil of mild terror that her son had actually considered this before, enough to articulate an eloquent response. 

Pull back the curtains for one second, and you’d realise that Minghao was far from dramatic. He was the plainest, dullest boy in his grade - just like any other teenager whose eyes were constantly glued to the phone, fingers jammed onto any and every game, head in their own clouds. Ordinary, really. And he was fine with it. Really really. 

“Yo.” A backpack came hurtling towards his face. Minghao leaned back out of the line of fire without taking his eyes off his screen where he was battling a volley of bullets. 

Soonyoung swam into his vision, eyes bunched up into slits that curved upward like twin crescents facing each other. Perpetually excitable, wore-his-heart-on-his-sleeve kind of character. Minghao found it hard to relate, but his aura bounced pleasantly off his own somber one, so he didn’t mind. He liked having someone who talked more, who made sure that conversation never turned stilted. 

“Hey,” he greeted back, shutting off his phone to be polite. For Soonyoung, he actually would turn off his phone when he was talking. “How did the talk with Ms. Kang go?”

Soonyoung’s forehead screwed up into a frown. Whoops, maybe he should have opened with a less touchy topic. 

“Like shit. Can you believe that she wants me to redo my project? Just because I deviated a little from my initial proposal. ‘I don’t see how street art is an appropriate form of placemaking? It’s graffiti.’ Fucking witch.”

Minghao didn’t actually think of a witch when he looked at Ms. Kang. She had shoulders that hunched into her body and a petite frame, with large, round glasses balanced on her sharp nose. She just looked like an old, mean woman, who – alright, maybe she really did look like a witch. 

“Why did you even pick such a weird subject for your second year project?” He slid his head onto his arm, scrunching his cheek against his forearm sleepily. The afternoons always wore heavier on him, spun him into a hazy drowsy stupor. 

Soonyoung looked down at him. “You know, you really should go out and do something. You used to dance right?”

“And?” He murmured peevishly, head blanketed in that afternoon sleep-haze. 

“I’m just saying. I chose that topic to get out more and explore the city. See something aside from these boring four university walls. We’re sophomores for fucks sake! Let’s get out and actually live like it. C’mon Hao.” He tugged on his sleeve like a petulant child of three. 

In the warm orange glow, Minghao found it easy to rein in any enthusiasm to move. Spring was fading out into summer, and soon, Seoul would be drenched in blistering heat. He wanted to savour what little fresh air he could without the dogged ramp up in humidity. 

“Do we have to start this new us now?” Soonyoung’s smile was radiant now, reaching to his eyes, and a pinch of guilt stabbed at him at the thought of stopping him once he got into this state. He didn’t like turning Soonyoung down, or being the cause of his mouth drooping down. “How about tomorrow.”

“Nope. Today. Right now. Coffee – you like that, right? I know a great cafe just three bus stops from here.”

Minghao sighed, but his fingers were already curled around his phone, body mournfully rising from the table to sit up and sling his backpack over his shoulders.

***

_‘Special for today: peach jelly juice’_ – the cafe’s signboard read, scrawled in big loops in a wash of colourful chalk on a tripod chalk stand. 

What the fuck was peach jelly juice even? 

Sitting down hadn’t been part of the plan – they were only supposed to do a grab-and-go and maybe be dragged into a placemaking tour. But not this - not sat on rickety upcycled bamboo chairs drinking from digestible tapioca straws and eating farm-to-table ingredient-laden grain bowls. 

“I was really just okay with an iced Americano,” he said as he sipped on a caramel macchiato. It was extremely sweet, two pumps too much caramel syrup.

“Of course, but this is a New Us.” Soonyoung chomped on his granola, scooped up bits of wild berries and yoghurt into his spoon to stuff into his mouth. “New Us likes syrup-laden coffee and brunch food.” He pointed his spoon at Minghao’s largely untouched coffee to jab his point home. 

“Thanks for the treat,” he mumbled, sounding far from grateful, and swirled his straw in his cup to mix the icky layers of melted ice and caramel syrup together. 

“And here’s to more, amigo,” Soonyoung raised his cup of peach jelly juice up high to signal a toast.

Minghao clinked his recyclable bamboo cup against Soonyoong’s metal tumbler, taking care to give Soonyoung’s cup just a light tap – it wouldn’t do to have the liquid slosh messily over the brim and onto the table. 

“You don’t like it?” Soonyoung jerked his chin to his cup. He wrapped his hand around Minghao’s wrist, eyes beseeching, almost begging him to say no. He did that sometimes, used up his best-friend points to be allowed to play snakes and ladders with Minghao’s heart. 

“No, no.” Minghao was quick to soothe. He pulled his hand away to grab the straw, slip it between his lips. “It’s just that I grabbed a canned coffee from one of the vending machines earlier, so I’m taking my time to savour this one. Palpitations, you know?”

Soonyoung did, but he thought that Minghao didn’t. 

“I thought you didn’t get palpitations.” 

“My mom said I would at like. The age of 25. You know what she’s like. Gotta look like I’m taking care of myself when she’s in town.” His fingers are squeezed tight around the cup, pads pressed white. 

Soonyoung laughed, nodding his head in grave understanding, a little pity thrown into the mix. “Yeah, I’ve always said your mom’s a little off-kilter. No offense of course. But you do you, man.”

He flicked his dyed red strands out of his face, picked up the tumbler, drained his cup of both jelly and juice. Beside him, Minghao’s hand fell limp on the table, a sizeable dent the exact size of his five fingers engraved on the flimsy bamboo cup. 

“So, why placemaking? I know you wanted to get around town, but you could have done anything.” Minghao hoped Soonyoung would pity him his strict, aloof mother and accept the change in topic. 

He did. 

“Honestly, it’s because everyone else has done every other topic to death. My seniors have run the gamut of presentations and research papers on different areas of street culture: tattoos, raves, graffiti, hell, even drug-dealing. I thought this might be refreshing yet poignant.” He said poignant like it was a word to be mocked for using. 

“Poignant.” Minghao quirked his brows up, unleashing a badly contained grin.

“Yeah. Poignant. But placemaking sounds so fake, now that I think about it. Fuck, why didn’t I just go with my gut and stick to underground cage fighting, or robot fights? _Fuck_.” 

That was thrice now, that Soonyoung had quoted his other ideas, and thrice now that Minghao had to remind him that Soonyoung didn’t have the guts to get into an actual cage fight for firsthand research. 

“Soonyoung,” he sighed. “We’ve been through this. You’re a scaredy-cat. You wouldn’t have been able to even not sweat at getting a fake ID.” 

Soonyoung’s lips were coated a faint shimmer of pink – peach juice remains, probably. Minghao pointedly looked down into his as of yet unfinished coffee. It was more melted ice than coffee now. What a waste of Soonyoung’s money. 

“You’re so mean,” he whined in a tone that indicated he didn’t actually mean any of it. 

“I’m realistic.” 

“Yeah? Is that why you’re cooped up at home everyday, living in your dream game world? Killing monsters, fighting imaginary enemies, and blowing up castles? Doesn’t sound very realistic to me.”

“Soon –”

“Nope. You’re not going to get to have a comeback for that, Xu Minghao. You’re a homebody who doesn’t want to be a homebody, and we’re going to change that. Today. No _nos_. Best friend privileges means I have complete veto over your social life.”

Minghao’s phone was snatched up from the table in a flurry, Soonyoung keying in his passcode with practiced ease, like he did it everyday, because he did do it everyday. 

“Hey! Soonyoung, what the fuck? Give it back!”

“You’re going to go on a date, Hao. Just one. At least one. And swear to me that you’ll make a good effort. Or I’ll kiss you in front of your dad.”

Minghao dropped his hand from where he had begun to wrest Soonyoung’s sleeve. “You wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“That’s an asshole move. You wouldn’t.” But Soonyoung had that wild, crazed film over his eyes, a little devil hiding in the daylight.

“I’ve kissed you before, I would do it again.” The casual way he said this made his heart squeeze painfully. 

“Come on, Hao. You need to stop being afraid – of yourself, of your dad, your family. Do something good for yourself, for once.”

Minghao had tried to squash the memory of Soonyoung’s soft lips on his, all those months ago at Wonwoo’s party. No, no, he mustn’t think about it. His heart was already doing traitorous cartwheels at the thought of Soonyoung kissing him in front of either of his parents. 

“Tinder,” Soonyoung was saying, fingers swiping wickedly across the already downloaded app, typing up a profile for him. “Is great.”

He looked up. “Boys and girls?”

“What?”

“You can choose whether you want to have boys or girls or both on your feed. What do you want?”

Minghao looked at him, mouth open in askance. 

“Alright, fine, just boys then.”

“Thanks so much for the Hobson’s choice,” he murmured. 

“I know I always have your vote of confidence,” he said cheerfully, and used photos of Minghao when he was at his skinniest and perhaps most alluring – back leaned casually against a smooth concrete wall, bucket hat tipped suggestively downwards, shirt unbuttoned to expose sharp collarbones. A swipe of gloss across his lips, his eyes artfully smudged black. Minghao had forgotten he could pose like that. Soonyoung had used his nickname as his profile name – Hao. 

“Done. Now, we wait for the simps.”

***

Evenings had turned colder as the summer heatwave thinned. 

Minghao’s solution during this frostier season was always to bundle up in thick throws and order in takeout every other night. He could afford to, because his dad had received a handsome sum every month from his mom – alimony, for the past seven years. 

Minghao hardly felt the prick of judgement now, when people found out his parents were divorced. The glances of disdain rolled off easily, like water off a duck’s back. 

Contrary to everyone’s beliefs, he and his mom were quite, quite well-off. Minghao could buy coffees from venti-sized Starbucks everyday if he wanted to and never have to count his coins. Heck, he could buy one each for both himself and Soonyoung everyday. He could indulge in something like a Gucci bag, or Chanel slippers, or a Burberry scarf, and not bat an eyelid. 

And then there was the house – three storeys, stuccoed bleached white walls, an immaculately-trimmed garden of tamed money plants and orchids, a marbled porch that screamed nouveau-riche. And then a sky loft and window on the top floor; Minghao’s room, the whole 150 square metres – all to himself. 

_“This is yours,”_ his dad had said, with hard eyes and a harder hand gripped on his shoulder. _“This is ours, and no one will take it away from us.”_

Minghao hadn’t said anything, hadn’t even shared a look of mutual determination to make this work, to be a happy family of two rather than a miserable three. Just dragged his tired body to his room and plopped himself onto the fluffy bed, soil-swept pants and dust-trailed shirt and all – and promptly passed out. 

This evening wasn’t at all any different from the usual. Minghao appreciated routine. He pulled one side of the curtains back, admiring the moon even though his room was washed too bright with a ring of overhead lights to tell how much of the light streaming in belonged to the moonlight and how much to his ceiling lights. 

He loved the calm it brought, the thought of the spectacle of nature alive at night, wild at its core, while he was safely indoors. 

Minghao appreciated routine. And more than that, the safety in it. He sighed, streaking a finger against the window to trace the shape of the crescent outline from thousands of light-years away. Soonyoung had often caught him staring out into the darkness when he’d come over to study. Now, he just expected to see him look out wistfully beyond his self-made tower, and it’d become something like an inside joke between them. 

His phone chimed just as he had settled back against the cushioned bench along the window. His throat muffled a groan. Soonyoung. 

_“Hello. How are you doing?”_

Minghao sat up straight. It was a Tinder notification, not a message from Soonyoung.

_“Saw your profile and think it’s cool that you dance. I dance too:)”_

_Just one good date, Hao. That’s all I’m asking. Or else..._ His best friend’s voice steamrolled through his brain. 

Damn you, Kwon Soonyoung.

He swiped his phone to unlock to read the message.

***

It was hard to see how the future would unfold or where it would take him. If only everything were laid out for him like on a silver platter – Minghao, after all, _was_ born with a silver spoon in his mouth. 

But not everything was supposed to come easy for everyone, not even princes. 

“He seems sweet.” Minghao texted this to Soonyoung, along with a screenshot of the message. Minghao hated using the word ‘nice’ to describe anyone if he could help it. It was the word when you thought the person was boring, and Gyu seemed anything but that.

“Gyu” – it sounded so innocent when rolled off his tongue. Minghao wondered whether he would be just as sweet in person, if he looked anything like the tanned boy with a toothy grin in his profile picture.

Was he a good conversationalist? Would he like the same things as him? Would he like dates to the movies, or to plays? Was he the cultural sort or the sporty sort? Did he love animals? Would he be okay if dates were spent in either of their homes, holed up in front of the computer or at a PC bang? Minghao knew he was potentially the most boring person on Earth, and it hadn’t seemed like something worth bothering to change until now. 

God, how had he allowed Soonyoung to drag him into this? 

_“Sweeeeeet,” Soonyoung sent back. “He’s 🔥🔥🔥. Get it Haooooooo."_

_“I’m not sure about him yet. I wanna chat a bit more first.”_

_“Boringgggggg”_

Minghao tapped out of the KakaoTalk app, returning to his home screen because it took a lot of effort to deal with his best friend when they weren’t on the same page. 

He played around with his phone, mindlessly tapping into and out of Instagram, then Naver, then a webtoon app, then back to KKT (but very pointedly ignoring any new messages from Soonyoung). This was typical of his Sunday afternoons and evenings – limbs strewn across the king-sized bed in awkward angles, dressed in an oversized tee and boxers, snacks on the little table next to the bed to chomp on whenever he felt peckish.

He swiped back to the home screen, and right there, the latest downloaded Tinder app stared right back at him. Innocuous and pulsing with danger at the same time. It seemed to be shimmering across his vision, the orange-pink flame icon burning a hole in his eyes. God help him. 

He opened it. Swiped to Guy’s last message, sent last night: _“Saw your profile and think it’s cool that you dance. I dance too:)”_

His fingers swiped back to scan the three photos he’d uploaded again - one of him in a black tee smiling casually at the camera with very obvious canines peeking out; another was of him on holiday somewhere or perhaps at some hippie part of South Korea, where he was standing in front of a wall with graffitied giant butterfly wings that were meant to look like they were sprouting from your back. And the last one - a candid shot of him holding his hand out in front of the camera, mouth open in mid-laughter. He was still so obviously good-looking, and his heart ached slightly at how easy some people could make it look. 

Minghao swiped back to the chat.

_“Hey! Uh yeah, I dance. Or used to. It’s cool that you dance too:) What genre do you like to dance to?”_

Message sent, damage done, he flopped back onto the mound of pillows and pushed his face into one of them. 

He hoped that he didn’t come off awkward. Minghao texted like how he talked, which tended to bring out his less-than-winning personality even virtually. 

His phone beeped within a minute. Minghao scrambled to grab his phone, heart pounding when he saw that Gyu had replied. He didn’t know about other people, but Minghao preferred not to play the waiting game. The anxiety from waiting, to constantly checking your phone – he had never understood the benefits of playing hard to get. Gyu got one more tick in his good books for not being like that. 

_“Hey! I love hiphop, but street jazz and urban funk is my thing too. I like trying out lots of styles! What about you?”_

Minghao let his fingers respond before his brain could start nitpicking on every word and punctuation mark and emoticon. Heart over head, in this case. 

_“Breakdancing mostly. Street jazz is fun, but I honestly just used to stick to b-boying.”_

He didn’t end with another question, which, in Soonyoung’s guidebook on online dating, was a no-no. _You need to keep the conversation running, Hao._

(It was up to the other person to ask too, you know, Soonyoung).

_“dude that’s so cool. I’ve never been able to do the breakdancing stuff. Probably break my neck. I feel so unaccomplished now, next to you. Why’d you stop dancing, if it’s ok to ask?”_

Polite. He was just being polite because they were at stage one of texting – remember that, Xu Minghao. 

_“No, it’s fine. Just kind of lost steam and interest in it. Was getting a little too competitive after a while and it wasn’t as fun as it used to be.”_

_“Aw man, that’s too bad. Dancing should make you feel good. I hope you found something else that does that for you?”_

Yeap, Gyu seemed good at asking the necessary questions, at keeping the conversation rolling. Minghao was mildly flattered that he still found Minghao someone who was worth chatting with beyond a ‘hi, how are you?’ and ‘what are you up to now?’

Minghao decided to just be honest. Trying to be interesting would be extremely hard for him, and he knew he wouldn’t be very good at pretending to be cool for very long. He wouldn’t last beyond two days.

_“Nope, not really. I game a lot? Nothing really cool.”_

_“Does it have to be cool? I think if you really like something and it makes you happy, then it’s cool. What makes it cool is that you’re cool about it.”_

Minghao read and reread that chunk of text. No one had ever said anything like that to him before, and it was comforting. Not even Soonyoung had ever said something close to that. More than that, it coated him with a warmth and a sense of acceptance. He felt good, happy even.

He read it another two times until he realised he hadn’t replied. Shit.

_“Sorry! I didn’t mean to leave you hanging! It’s just that…that was nice. What you said. No one’s said that to me before. I kept rereading it.”_

Gyu replied immediately, the bubbles blinking furiously as he typed.

_“It’s true. You’re cool, Hao. Deal with it.”_

He sent the emoji with the black sunglasses, and Minghao could imagine his toothy grin as he sent it, like in that third picture.

_“You’re cool too”_ , Minghao began to type, then back-pedalled. 

_“I’ll try. No promises! But I gotta say goodnight - I wanna game for a bit then sleep.”_

_“Goodnight, Hao. Sweet dreams.”_

Minghao appreciated that he didn’t say something corny like ‘dream of me’. Another check in his list.

He sent another goodnight, tacking on a smiley face, and shut off his phone, crawled onto his chair and switched on his computer. He wouldn’t sleep for the next couple of hours, but he was more okay with it now. He didn’t even need to tamp down a quiver of guilt that usually settled in his stomach when he clicked into Fortnite.

***

When Minghao woke, it was to the regular barrage of morning texts from Soonyoung, one from his dad telling him he was out of town for work and wouldn’t be home until next Monday, and one from Gyu on the Tinder app.

He tapped on Gyu’s message, eyes bleary and sleep-crusted. The Monday mid-mornings were always harder to adjust to, even though they were knee-deep in the summer holidays. Emotional habits were hard to kick. He rolled onto his front, lowering the brightness of his phone so he could read the message without squinting painfully.

_“It’s useless when it is windy,  
It makes wind when there is none,  
When you don’t move it, it is not cool,  
When you move it, it becomes cool”_

The message began and ended just like that – no greeting, no sign-off. His eyebrows furled into a frown. Was it a riddle he was supposed to answer?

_“Is this a fan?”_

He thought it was right, but it seemed too easy.

_“I don’t know, but it sounds right. I just came across this Chinese riddle with the word cool in it and thought of you.”_

His heart pumped fast against his chest, vision blurring as he imagined Mingyu smiling at him. Minghao sucked his lip in-between his teeth, biting down hard on his lip to bring his mind back down from the clouds. 

_“You know I’m Chinese?”_ He typed. 

_“Hao isn’t exactly a Korean name, is it? Plus you’re definitely Asian if that photo is really you. So I just took a wild stab in the dark. Did I hit dead centre?”_

_“Yeah. Fine. You’re smart. Happy?”_

_“Cool. You’re cool, Hao.”_

Minghao laughed, and forgot that Gyu couldn’t hear or see him. A sudden wish struck him, that he wanted to be able to. It was mildly frightening.

He sent the emoji with the black sunglasses, and proceeded to tap out of the app, dialling Soonyoung’s number in a flurry.

“Hi. Breakfast? Now, please?”

***

“So, you want to meet him?”

Soonyoung chewed on his chopsticks, tongue linking up the remnants of the black bean sauce. 

Minghao had insisted on their usual Chinese restaurant fare instead of their _New Us Brunch_ , wrangling Soonyoung into agreeing on chai lattes in the afternoon if he allowed them this teeny blip. He didn’t know how long both of them could take this until one of them caved. He suspected he would first.

“I don’t know.” He bumped his feet against the table legs, kicking out unconsciously at the cheap wood. “He does seem like...a nice person to talk to. Like he’d be a good friend.”

“Are you saying that if it doesn’t work out romantically, you’re gonna replace me as your best friend?” Soonyoung screeched dramatically, and banged his cup of iced oolong tea onto the table. 

Over at the cashier, the manager frowned, and a few nearby patrons clucked their tongues reproachfully. 

“Oh my god, please be quiet. You’re going to get us kicked out.”

“Pshh. We’re regulars. They wouldn’t.” He jabbed his chopsticks at him. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you haven’t answered my question.”

“Of course not,” he snorted. “You’re my best friend. You’re irreplaceable.”

Soonyoung’s shoulders slackened. “Good.” He wound a big mound of noodles around his chopsticks and stuffed them whole into his mouth, cheeks puffing up like a hamster.

“Don’t choke and die,” Minghao mumbled around his straw. He took little bites of his fried rice, picking up single grains of rice and mixed vegetables artfully with his chopsticks. 

“Just meet him already.” Soonyoung managed to enunciate around the bulge of food in his mouth. He chewed a little bit longer and finally swallowed, washing it down with a bit more tea. “It seems like he’s a really cool dude, and you like him enough to not stop texting. It’s a good sign.”

Soonyoung was right on all counts, but Minghao was still apprehensive. He didn’t know why he was pausing, but he wanted to give it a little more time, to wait. Like as if the waiting would make him seem more genuine, more desirable. More genuinely desirable. 

“It’s my first date in a while. I don’t want to be in a rush.” 

“It’s up to you,” Soonyoung finally said in a voice that suggested he had wanted to say something else but was biting it back. He placed his chopsticks onto the plastic rest, decorated with blue Chinese characters that spelt the name of the restaurant. 

“It is, but why do I feel like you don’t really think so?”

“I do. It’s just that I _know_ you want to go out with him. I can tell. Why won’t you just do it? You shouldn’t be scared. If he doesn’t like you, then fuck him.”

“I’m not scared. I just don’t see the point of rushing. I don’t need a boyfriend to complete my life.”

“Who said anything about boyfriends? It’s just one date, Hao. You’re already jumping the gun in your head, thinking too much. This is exactly why you just need to go out with him.”

Minghao just glared, because a part of him – a big part of him – knew that Soonyoung was irritatingly right. He jammed his straw into his mouth, sucking petulantly on his own cup of iced tea. 

On the table, his phone buzzed and an orange-pink banner popped up. 

_“having coffee from this indie chain – it’s really good! Thought it’d be a change from like. toms and toms.”_

Minghao plucked the phone from the table, not missing Soonyoung’s wayward side glance. The chat opened to a picture of a cup bracketed with a collar, the cafe name printed in cursive, block letters on the collar. It seemed like Gyu was really the hippie, indie type. 

_“it looks cool! what’s your coffee poison?” He typed quickly._

_“Guess. I’ve got you pegged for an iced americano.”_

A smile tugged at the corner of his lips - _“how’d you know?”_

_“I just knew it. Simple, classic. Like you. C’mon guess mine.”_

Minghao’s cheeks had begun to turn a faint pink. Soonyoung leaned forward, eyes squinting in half-suspicion and half-interest as he tried to make out the text. Minghao swung his phone away. Soonyoung growled. 

_“PSL”_

_“I know that was a joke.”_

_“Maybe”_

_“You can’t guess mine, can you?”_

Minghao bit his lip. No, he couldn’t. He conjured up all the syrup-laden ones in the world, but that somehow didn’t fit Gyu. He would have said an Americano too, but it was too easy, too simple. And Gyu wasn’t like Minghao. 

_“Yeah, I can’t. Cold brew?”_ He tried with the expectation that he was wrong. 

_“Really? That’s what you actually think? Bougie? Ouch”_

_“Caramel Macchiato?”_

_“haha. i don’t actually like coffee.”_

Minghao’s eyes widened as he read the message a few times over.

_“wait. really?”_

_“no. not really. haha. i’m just messing with you. but i don’t drink a whole lot of coffee anw. mostly green tea”_

_“uh ok. why green tea?”_

_“it’s good for the complexion. and sex. but mostly the complexion.”_

Minghao didn’t know if he was jerking his chain again.

_“uh. ok. good for future reference?”_

_“you’ll see ;)”_

Minghao could admire his boldness and confidence. It wasn’t annoying, but instead really, really sexy. 

_“will i?”_

_“you know yourself better than i do. you tell me.”_

Well. Touché. Minghao couldn’t muster up a smarter retort. 

“What’s he saying!” Soonyoung strained his neck even further forward, making grabby hands at him and nearly tumbling nose-first into Minghao’s half-eaten plate, rice long gone cold. 

“Uh, nothing really. Just talking about coffee.”

“You BLUSHED. C’mon Hao, show me!”

Minghao handed over his phone, mostly because he was afraid it might end up in their shared bowl of soup otherwise. 

“Wow, he’s a good flirt. You’re not bad too,” he mumbled, scrolling through the chat. “He totally got you on the last one though. I like him already.”

“Shut up.”

Soonyoung just grinned wickedly. “Go out with him, Minghao. God knows you need to get laid.”

Minghao concentrated on his reply to Gyu while trying to quash down images of them lying together in bed. Oh god. Nope.

He managed a _“we’ll see”_ and promptly closed the chat.

His neck prickled with heat when he looked back up at Soonyoung. Fuck.

“Soonyoung.” He clasped his hands tightly together and slipped them under the table so that Soonyoung wouldn’t catch him picking at his cuticles again.

“Hmm?”

“What if I don’t meet him? Will you be disappointed in me?”

Soonyoung looked at him for a long while, head tilted to the side, eyes not missing how both of his hands were wrung together. 

“Why would I be disappointed in you?”

“Because. Because, well…just because,” he finished lamely.

His eyes blinked slowly, folding into a gentle, fond expression as he reached across the table, palm faced up expectantly. 

“I’m always here for you, Hao. Whether you end up going out with him or not.”

Minghao released a hand so he could place it in Soonyoung’s waiting hand. It was warm, his fingers callused from years of playing the violin. Soonyoung was nothing if not versatile and talented, and not for the first time, he wished that life could have been easier, that the boy across from him would be the one for him.

“I know.” He smiled, gave his hand a single squeeze and flashing a watery smile that meant more than Soonyoung thought.

***

Gyu had been right, the coffee at The Loft was delicious. 

Minghao sipped at his mug, blowing carefully each time before taking a slow gulp. The walls were painted a cool cream, with a mix of light cherry wood furniture and dark walnut panels. Potted plants lined the entrance, warm yellow bulbs hung above each table. Minimalist aesthetic at its best when done well.

Garosugil was hardly an area he frequented, and he was beginning to understand why. No shop was repeated twice – not like in Myeongdong, which presented a maze within a maze of tourist traps, where every second shop was the same as the corner before. It was like getting lost in a fairytale forest, where every trunk, every leaf, looked the same. He wasn’t used to it at all.

He snapped a photo of his hot Americano and sent it to Gyu without any precursor. 

_“you went there!”_

_“i love the vibes! thanks for the rec!”_

_“Yes!! I knew you’d like it!”_

Minghao side-eyed his phone. 

_“Why’d you think so?”_

_“Felt like you’d be someone who would know a good cup of coffee. Especially if black coffee is your go-to.”_

Minghao felt himself falling just a little bit more for him. 

_“a lot of my dancer friends love artisanal too, and they loved it when I introduced this place to them. guess all of you indie guys are really alike 😆”_

A bit of his soul deflated at that. That he had this whole group of friends who seemed like cookie-cutters of Minghao and were probably way cooler than him. 

_“are you still there?”_

Minghao bit his lip. Fuck, was he nearby? He wasn’t ready! A tiny part of him did want to see Gyu now, but the practical part of his mind was yelling to run, that he was crazy for even having that passing thought. 

_“if you are, grab a packet of their strawberry sweets at the counter. You won’t regret it, swear.”_

His chest loosened. Minghao felt a little guilty about that. 

_“ok! Strawberry is actually one of my favourite flavours:)”_

_“ahhh I thought you might be a strawberry type.”_

Minghao was beginning to think that Gyu was a really good guesser. The kind of person who instinctively knew what you liked and knew how to click with people in a heartbeat. That was a natural talent he sorely didn’t possess, and he envied people like that.

_“why?”_ Privately, he thought he should stop asking why if he didn’t want Gyu to come back with something equally gut-punching again. 

_“would you believe me if I said I just knew it?”_

_“uhhhh idk. maybe? you seem like someone who’d be good at guessing games or good at anything in general.”_

_“thanks. i don’t wanna sound like i’m not modest, but…it’s kind of true ;)”_

Minghao’s fingers hovered above the keyboard.

_“please say something so that i don’t sound like some douchey jock”_

Minghao giggled. _“are you saying you’re a jock?! oh no…”_

_“wait i just meant that metaphorically. i’m a giant nerd irl!!”_

_“you could just be saying that to be nice and humble.”_

_“really. when we meet, you’ll see for yourself.”_

Minghao took another drag of his coffee, draining the bitter contents down his throat all at once until his eyes watered a little. His heart did little skips as Gyu’s message turned over and over in his head.

When.

There was that word again, and it brought up sparkling, dreamy images of them sipping coffee across each other, eyes peering over the rim of their mugs, shy and interested. 

He really, really, wanted to meet Gyu now.

Gyu – as he slipped a hand over his, his warm smile stoking a fire in his chest. Gyu covering his face with all five fingers brushing his cheek. Tipping his head up for a kiss. Oh god. Get it together, Xu Minghao.

_“haha. sure.”_

_“what, you don’t think i’m serious?”_

_“hahaha. um. i don’t know what to think, tbh.”_

_“do you like talking to me?”_

MInghao took a few deep breaths at that. An easy question – just yes or no, really – and yet it was the most nerve-wracking answer. It put it out there in the universe if he said yes. No take backs.

_“yeah.”_

_“Then?”_

_“Then….”_

_“Then don’t overthink. Okay?”_

It’s not that easy, Minghao grumbled under his breath.

_“It’s that easy,”_ came Gyu’s reply, almost like he’d heard him.

_“Stop reading my thoughts,”_ Minghao found himself typing back, before waves of second-guessing could bubble turgidly. His face felt hot all over, and now it was that awful waiting game that he had to play with himself. 

Minghao flipped his phone face down, sipped that singular drop of coffee left in his cup, drummed his fingers against the table, and couldn’t help but turn his phone face up again. 

Still unread. Maybe that was a good thing.

When he chanced a peek at his phone again, a banner message from Gyu flashed on his screen.

_“what other thoughts?”_

_“uh. nothing important. just. yeah.”_

Stupid, stupid, Minghao.

_“aww come on, Hao. You can’t just start that and then stop like that. it’s not right!”_

Come on Minghao, be brave.

_“ugh fine. just. you always know what I like. it’s just kind of scary and uncomfortable that you seem to know me so well. It just makes me a little nervous because we haven’t met irl”_

He sent another hurried reply.

_“It’s no pressure! It’s just me. I just don’t really talk about myself and it’s hard to open up”_

_“hey, it’s totally ok! Don’t sweat. Like you said, I’m just a really good guesser 😉”_

Minghao exhaled under his breath. 

_“alright, how about we do something like 20 questions since I’m so bad at guessing?”_

Gyu fired back immediately. 

_“Ok, but I have a better idea – let’s skip all the favourite colours and food stuff. where’s your getaway place when you want to hide from the world?”_

And here was what made them so different – Minghao could see it clearly with each text exchanged. Gyu was so spontaneous, it made him a little jealous.

_“Uh my room?”_

_“Seriously?”_

_“It’s quite a big room...”_

_“Wow ok fine. Your turn.”_

_“a dream that fizzled out?”_

_“Ooh deep. I like it. Artist.”_

_“You can draw?? Please show me something sometime”_

_“Haha maybe I’ll draw you 😛”_

_“Like one of your French girls?” Minghao couldn’t help it._

_“What French girls? I only know a Chinese boy.”_

Fuck. Smooth. 

_“your turn.”_

_“Don’t think i missed that you ignored that. But fine – if you had to kill, what weapon would you use?”_

_“really?? That’s so fucking dark. I need to think about it....a gun?? idk.”_

_“That’s so boring...”_

_“Okay fine, what would you pick? And this isn’t counted as one of the twenty ok”_

_“a trident dagger”_

What the actual fuck. 

_“Wow. I don’t even know what that is...”_

Gyu sent a picture – and it was exactly like a trident, with two blades sprouting from the sides and a hilt that curved wickedly upwards.

_“omg you’ve thought about this”_ Minghao typed. 

_“Haven’t you? I mean. Thought about what it would be like to kill someone. Not a specific someone but just. A someone. Anyone.”_

Minghao didn’t know how to answer. Maybe a passing thought, yes, but it was more when his thoughts wandered, ideas flitting about and coming and going at random. 

_“not really...maybe how I would die, but not really how I would kill anyone. That’s kind of crazy. And weird. Like who would spend time thinking about stuff like that? Haha.”_

The message glowed as he read over his words and realised that it might be mildly offensive. Gyu had confided in him, and Minghao had snubbed it and told him he was weird and crazy. Oh my fucking god he was such an idiot. 

_“I mean, it’s just a little scary that some people think like that. But to each his own, right? Like who are we to judge?”_

Oh my god, he was probably making it worse. 

Maybe Gyu really was offended after all, Minghao supposed, after twenty seconds of burning holes into his screen had passed and he still hadn’t replied. 

Two minutes stretched into five, and by then Minghao was fully convinced that he’d made the wrong move.

He got up, making sure to take small, slow steps towards the counter to pay for his drink. There was a tiny flame of hope crackling in his stomach even as he made it to the door. Nearly ten minutes had passed, and the message had been marked as read. 

“Sir? Will that be all?” The server handed him his change, which Minghao accepted with a curt nod and glazed-over eyes.

He forgot to buy the strawberry sweets.

***

Usually, Minghao spent at least one weekend during the humid summer holidays hiking with Soonyoung. There wasn’t a particular hill or mountain he favoured – Minghao was game to hike anywhere where Soonyoung wished.

If Soonyoung was happy, Minghao was happy. Usually.

“You don’t wanna hike this weekend? But the weather is perfect!” Soonyoung whined loudly, kicking his legs out childishly. They were both lying on Minghao’s bed – Minghao propped up against the headboard and cross-legged with his iPad on his lap, while Soonyoung lay sprawled across the other end of the king-sized bed. 

He stretched his leg just far enough for his toe to tip the iPad over.

“Hey!”

“You’re sulking. Why?”

“I’m not sulking.” 

“Yes, you are. Is it because of Gyu?” 

Sometimes – most times – Soonyoung really knew him too goddamn well. 

“Maybe.”

_“Maybe.”_ Soonyoung mimicked. 

“Shut up.”

Soonyoung crawled closer to him, until he laid his head in Minghao’s lap so that he was looking up into his eyes. 

He knew Minghao’s tics, could read his emotions from a single shutter of his eyelids or from the way his eyes would briefly flicker to the left – when he was thinking too hard or when he didn’t want to talk. 

He reached up a hand to touch his cheek, running his index finger over his lips. Minghao just closed his eyes, trying to ignore the memory of Soonyoung kissing him not once, but twice, at Wonwoo’s party. 

One in the middle of the stairs, another softer, hazier one in the guest bedroom when he’d gone up to hide.

“When did my best friend fall in love?”

He pushed his hands off his face. “I’m not _in love_. I just said something stupid and I’m kicking myself. What if he doesn’t ever want to talk to me again?”

“Then he doesn’t. You don’t even know him and you’ve not met, so don’t overthink it. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”

“Huh. That’s so easy for you to say,” Minghao murmured under his breath. It came out sounding so bitter.

Soonyoung sat up at that. “Oh, Hao. I guess you really like him a lot, huh?” He took his hands in his, bringing it up to his chest. 

“If it doesn’t work out, I’ll personally find someone on campus to be your date to Junhui’s Halloween party this year. I swear – Scout’s Honour.”

“You’re not a Boy Scout...”

“So?”

“I don’t want a date to the party, I just want Gyu to know I’m not a giant asshole!”

“Have you told him that?”

Minghao grimaced. 

“You haven’t? Then how do you expect him to talk to you?”

“I don’t know how to say it.”

_“Gyu, what I said was such a shit thing to say, and I wanted you to know that I’m really sorry.”_

“That’s so hard. Can you send that for me?” He whined, burying his head into his hands, knowing full well that Soonyoung wouldn’t do it for him. Because he was that good of a friend. 

“Haha. Nice try. Own your shit.”

Minghao flopped back onto his pillows and groaned loudly. He rarely ever needed to apologise for anything – well, he rarely did anything interesting to warrant him ending up needing to have something to be sorry about – so this was an extremely hard feat. 

_“Hey,”_ he began to type. _“I guess you’re pissed off at me, and I just wanted to let you know that what I said was shitty. I didn’t mean it that way but it still wasn’t nice. I’m sorry.”_

The phone bounced off the bed when he threw it roughly across the mattress. It bobbed and landed with a soft thump onto the thick carpet below. 

“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Soonyoung propped his face onto his hands, planting his elbows onto the bed. “Now how about we skip the hike and go to the beach instead?” 

Minghao made a low grumble in his throat, code for no when he didn’t want to verbalise his disagreement. He wanted to stay holed up at home, wallowing in his misery of his own doing while munching on a bowl of instant noodles and dumplings. 

“I’m not allowing you to wallow, Xu Minghao. Let’s go, come on. You don’t even have to swim! We can play a round of 1-1 frisbee, or just lounge on the deck chairs and sip on cocktails.”

“I don’t like cocktails.”

“Iced tea. Whatever.”

“Tea’s not really my cup of tea –”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Hao, I’m not taking no for an answer and you know it.” That telltale grin was back on his face, the same one he’d given when they’d crashed the seniors’ houseparty last year, the same one when they’d had to climb the backgate when the police came knocking at midnight. The same one before he’d kissed him. 

No, there really was no saying no to Soonyoung.

“Fine. But I want sushi afterwards. And lots and lots of aburi salmon.”

He bowed his head from where it was still propped up on his hands and rolled onto Minghao’s lap again, sighing happily and humming with satisfaction.

***

When the breeze kicked in at high tide, Minghao loved standing by the shore so that he could feel the spray of saltwater tickle his face. 

“Alright, I’m glad you dragged me out here,” Minghao admitted. The beach wasn’t particularly crowded and the weather – as Soonyoung had pointed out earlier - was really perfect. Cool and cloudless skies, a mild breeze strong enough to just ruffle their hair and clothes and carry the freshness of the sea through. 

“Told you.” He stretched his arms out and kicked out at the sand. “Let’s go get some snacks and grab the deck chairs before there are none left.”

Good point. The two of them turned and made for the long row of deck chairs arranged with royal blue-and-white striped beach towels laid neatly across it. There were a couple still left unoccupied, thankfully.

“I’ll go grab us some drinks,” Minghao offered. 

Soonyoung smiled toothily and hopped onto the chair, popping his AirPods into his ears and settling properly into the cushion.

The bar was more of a long shack decked out in Hawaiian-themed decor, like they meant to have a luau every single day. There were coconut shells hanging above the wooden awnings, a burst of colourful umbrellas planted at odd corners of the ceiling, and a mass of stray feathers and hay as a makeshift doormat. A little campy, but also the reason why both of them loved coming here. 

Aside from the row of stools along the bar counter, there were ten or so tables arranged around the shack too for more seating. It was altogether a small place really, because most people had their drinks at the deck chairs. Besides, the Boos also owned the surf shop just behind the bar too.

“Minghao!” Hansol, the resident bartender called out from behind the counter. He twirled twin martini glasses before placing them gently onto the counter. His hands were always kept busy – he liked to spin full bottles of alcohol in the air and over and around his body when he wasn’t actually pulling together tasty concoctions for guests, fancying himself Tom Cruise from that movie, Cocktail. He was really quite talented, hardly broke anything, and kept the patrons entertained, so Mrs. Boo hadn’t put her foot down. Yet.

“Hi Hansol! Can I get two iced lemonades please?”

“Sure, I’ll get Kwannie to make them for you. It’s been a while since you came by. Soonyoung with you?”

“Yeah, who else? Ahaha. I’ve missed you guys. How’s business this summer?”

“It’s TERRIBLE.” A voice snipped from the other end of the bar, and Minghao threw his head back to laugh. 

“I’m sure it’s not that bad, Seungkwan. Soonyoung said the beach is always crowded.”

“It’s only terrible because you keep scaring the customers away when you force them to subscribe to your YouTube channel,” Hansol murmured.

“I heard that. And I’m a good singer. Great, even,” Seungkwan sniffed. Minghao could tell that it wasn’t totally put-on.

“I’ll subscribe. What’s your channel?” 

Seungkwan looked up and beamed at him. “You will? It’s actually just ‘BOO SEUNGKWAN’. You’re a dream come true. Two lemonades coming up, on the house.”

Minghao laughed again, breaking into a peal of laughter at Hansol’s eye roll as Seungkwan disappeared into the kitchen, the swinging doors fluttering in his wake.

“He really means it though. He’s been going for auditions and stuff at every entertainment company in Seoul.” Hansol slung a damp tea towel over his shoulder as he finished wiping down another set of glasses and twirled them a few times deftly. “He’s been a little down lately that no one’s asked him to come back for another audition.”

“Well, they’re missing out if they don’t want him,” Minghao said, eyes filled with determination for Seungkwan, whom he’d known since they were in elementary school. Minghao had moved to Korea in time for the beginning of the school year, and the beach had been one of the first places he’d gone to. Seungkwan’s mom ran the bar, and they’d hit it off.

“Yeah, well, it just sounds like lip service when I say it.” Hansol shrugged and turned to keep the glasses under the counter. Minghao returned it with a sad smile of his own. “I’ve gotta get back to work – just shout if you need anything.”

“Of course. Thanks, Sol.”

Minghao sauntered to an empty table and sat down to wait. He could see Soonyoung’s outline in the distance, limbs sprawled out in a rather unsightly pose, as usual. His stomach growled as the smell of fish fingers and truffle fries wafted about, and he realised that they hadn’t really had a proper lunch. He sighed, sliding his head onto the table on his arm. Maybe he’d ask Seungkwan for a bowl of snacks when he came by later.

“Hao? Is that…is that you?”

Minghao angled his head to the side and tipped one eye open to the source of the voice. It was unfamiliar, so he figured it might be an acquaintance from school.

Black sunglasses hooked over a crew neck tee, tanned skin, a wide smile with sharp canine-like teeth peeking out, eyes that sparked with mischief. His vision travelled up and up, drinking in the details, trying to piece them all together.

A candid picture of a mouth open in laughter with twin canine teeth slammed full-force into his brain. No, it couldn’t be –

Minghao jolted up, limbs tangling up as he struggled to stand. His mind was blank, like a train that had been running at hundreds of miles an hour and had spun off the rails from a sudden, wrong swerve. 

He ran.

“Wait, hey, Hao?!” 

It was a maelstrom in his head. Just a whirlpool of text messages looping over and over as he pumped his legs. He might have been running towards Soonyoung, or to the water, he didn’t know. He just needed to get away so that he could breathe.

A strong hand slipped around his wrist, yanking him back sharply enough that he choked on a lungful of air.

“Hao, shit, wait, please.”

His grip around his wrist relaxed, but he slid both hands up around his elbows lightly. Too close, too close, Minghao thought faintly.

“–G…Gyu?”

“Hao? So it’s really you? Oh, thank god.”

This was far from how he’d imagined their first meeting would be, if at all. Gyu. Standing right opposite him, in all his tanned glory. GyuGyuGyu.

“I…” He lifted his hand to rub against the back of his neck. Every witty, flirty thought was thrown out the window. In this crucial moment that was supposed to be filled with an explosion of stars and some kind of magic, Minghao came up startlingly short. 

“Hi.” He croaked out something that was barely a whisper. 

“Hi,” Gyu returned, but without any awkwardness laced into it. He was smiling so widely, and Minghao could almost see his body shaking, like he was trying to contain himself.

“I’m sorry!” Minghao blurted out. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to make you feel like shit.” 

He dropped his hands from his elbows, hands out in a placating gesture. “Hey, hey, no, it’s okay. I know you didn’t.” 

He smiled warmly, almost as if he was trying to make Minghao feel better, when it should have been the other way around.

“Hao? What’s going on?” Soonyoung. Shit.

Minghao took a shaky step back as Soonyoung bounded up to them. “Uh, I met Gyu…” He gestured weakly to Gyu.

Soonyoung’s brows rose and his forehead wrinkled comically. “Like, randomly?”

“Mingyu, actually,” Gyu – or Mingyu – said. His smile was shy now, and a little uneasy, now that Soonyoung had entered the picture. “Yeah, it was random. I saw him at the bar. Talk about serendipity, huh?”

“Oh. Wow! I’m kind of speechless. Hi, I’m Soonyoung, his best friend.” He stuck out a hand, and when Minghao looked at him, his expression had changed to something harder and more threatening.

Mingyu shook his hand, the smile never waning. Well, that counted for something.

“Minghao, actually.” It was a relief, to finally introduce himself properly.

Now that he had the chance to really look at him, there was no other description for Mingyu except for the fact that he was gorgeous. And it wasn’t even because he was handsome, but because his smile and his eyes were such winning features that conveyed a natural warmth that just made him that much more attractive. 

Now that he was looking at him in the flesh, he was falling even deeper.

“Minghao. I like it.” He proffered a hand to shake. When Minghao took it, it was warm. He shivered and hoped that he hadn’t noticed.

“Uh, sorry to break up this lovely meeting, but Hao, where are our lemonades?”

Minghao’s eyes blew open. “Oh shit, I’m sorry. Seungkwan was making them but uh…” He looked at him guiltily. 

Soonyoung looked at him knowingly. “It’s okay, I’ll go get them,” he sighed. “Just like, go sit on the deck chairs so they don’t get taken.”

Minghao mumbled out an affirmative and hurried to the chairs, Mingyu in tow. When he’d made sure that their chairs were safely guarded, he turned to Mingyu and squared his shoulders.

“I was an ass for saying that. I get it if you don’t wanna talk anymore. Really.” 

Seeing Gyu still made him want to run away. If he hadn’t been holding both cups of lemonade, he was sure that he just might have. He wondered if his trembling fingers were obvious.

“I won’t lie to you, I did feel a little hurt. But I know you didn’t mean to.” He bent his head a little, brown hair shaking over his eyes as he did so. “I do still want to talk to you, if me running after you wasn’t obvious enough of an answer.”

Minghao felt a hot flash of red creep up his face, and he covered his eyes with both hands. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do. I just saw you and panicked.”

Mingyu pried his fingers off and took them into his own. Minghao tried hard not to focus on that. “Hey, it’s okay. I get it. I didn’t text you because I was trying to figure some stuff out and your message wasn’t good timing either, so I’m sorry too. Let me make it up to you.”

“What? I should be the one –”

“Let me make it up to you, Minghao. Please?” He looked at him beseechingly, and he would have been remiss to say no now. 

“Okay,” he whispered. He pulled his hands out of Mingyu’s when he saw Soonyoung approaching, attempting to balance the full cups while treading on uneven sandy bumps. “Okay.”

Mingyu had a kicked expression on his face that was quickly schooled into a more neutral one in a heartbeat. “Okay. Tomorrow? I’ll text you.” 

Now it was his turn to step away. He nodded to Soonyoung, who had successfully manoeuvred his way without spilling a drop. 

“It was really nice to meet you, Soonyoung, really.” He turned to Minghao. “Have a good day, Minghao.” This he said softly. And then he was retreating back up the beach.

“Here, your lemonade. Seungkwan said something about it being on the house?” He stuck the cup under his nose.

“So. Mingyu. Destiny, or what? He’s hotter in real life though. And he looks as sweet as he sounds on text. Also, you guys were practically a nose hair apart when I found you – what was that all about?”

Minghao took a big gulp of his drink, ignoring the rose gold metal straw Seungkwan had provided. “It just happened. I kind of panicked when I saw him and ran. And he ran after me. You found us. End of story, ta-da.”

“Great story.” Soonyoung said dryly, but let it slide. “I take it you guys are gonna meet soon then?” He wiggled his eyebrows.

“Yeah. Tomorrow.”

“I knew it! I’m really happy for you, Hao. You deserve this.”

Minghao looked back at his drink, not sure what he really deserved. 

“He does look familiar, though…” Soonyoung mused as he sipped his own drink. 

“Soonyoung. I’ve shown you pictures of him, of course he looks familiar.”

Soonyoung shook his head obstinately. His eyes were crossed with a mixture of confusion and puzzlement, the gears in his head whirring. “No, I mean I’ve seen him before the Tinder thing. I just didn’t match him earlier because he looks slightly different in photos.”

“What are you talking about? He looks exactly the same.”

“Hmm.” Soonyoung didn’t argue any further, but his eyes remained unconvinced even as he tugged Minghao to the deck chair to sit in easy silence with 90s Korean music wafting through his mini speaker.

***

_“Meet me at Cheonho Subway Station at 5pm. I have something I want to show you.”_

That was all that Mingyu’s text read. 

_“you’re not going to tell me where we’re going, are you?”_

_“;)”_

Ugh. Fine. 

He shrugged on a thin windbreaker and a pair of jeans just in case they went anywhere that was mildly cold or outdoors. He combed through the knots in his hair as best as he could, slipped into a pair of black sneakers, and was out the door.

When he got to Cheonho station, Mingyu was already waiting for him. Minghao felt he could breathe easier when he saw that Mingyu was dressed in a similar fashion, except that Minghao’s one pair of jeans likely cost more than Mingyu’s entire outfit. He had on black jeans and a hoodie over a tee, and sneakers too.

“Hi.” He couldn’t help but still be a little awkward, even though they had exchanged so many texts between yesterday and today. Seeing Mingyu in person was still like something out of a dream.

“You’re early,” Mingyu said in greeting, reaching for Minghao’s hand to squeeze once before drawing back and placing his hand on his arm. “This way.”

“So, you’re really not telling me where we’re going, even now?”

“It wouldn’t be a surprise if I did, would it? Besides, you’ll find out in less than half an hour.” 

“Fine,” he said, not without a tinge of grumpiness. He wasn’t particularly fond of surprises, but he’d allow it, for Mingyu. 

When they exited the station, Mingyu led them to a pavement that stretched out towards a pathway in the middle of a field. Cheonho was quite a bit farther away from most places that Minghao frequented in Seoul. 

“This looks like a park,” he remarked as Mingyu led them in deeper and deeper. It was still early enough, not even six, so the sky was still a murky shade of blue. 

“Yup, it’s Gwangnaru Park, one of the many parks that are linked to the Han River. This one is one of my favourites because it’s quieter.”

It was more than quiet – it looked abandoned. Tall stalks of weeds shook in the light breeze, and huge stone monuments were scattered about the place. Numerous bicycle trails zipped along the park, their paths curling in complicated meanders that Minghao couldn’t make out where they really ended or if they just looped back.

“How often do you come here?”

“Only when I want to be alone. It’s not just this park though. There are prettier ones that I like to visit, but this is perfect because you won’t get chased away even when it gets late.”

They walked a bit further until Mingyu seemed to have found the spot he was looking for. He squatted on his tiptoes, hunkering down to unzip his backpack. All sorts of items came tumbling out – first a picnic mat, followed by a string of food containers and thermos flasks. 

“Oh my god, you prepared a picnic.” 

“I thought it’d be nice for a first date. A chill place, with not-so-fancy comfort food. What do you think?”

Minghao nodded fervently and joined him on the mat. “I think I love it. I _know_ I love it. It’s a great idea. Sorry I didn’t bring anything! If you’d told me, I could have brought like. Chips. Or even my speakers.” 

The picnic mat was a deep royal blue, and at least two metres long, large enough for the two of them to stretch out comfortably. It was hardy, not at all like the cheap, red-and-white checkered ones they clapped about wildly and flipped over at the slightest bit of wind. Minghao rolled onto his side and closed his eyes, breathing in the smell of damp grass. 

“Hey, don’t go to sleep on me. We still have a ton of food to finish.” Mingyu nudged his side with his socked feet as he arranged the containers neatly between the two of them. 

Minghao opened his eyes to tupperwares of sandwiches, fried rice, aglio olio, cut-up sausages, sweet potatoes, Korean pancakes cut up into triangles, and some Korean side dishes – kimchi, spicy radishes, soybean sprouts, spinach. He spied another container of jellies and cake. Then there were two flasks resting next to plastic cups, and two bottles of water. Mingyu had gone all out. 

“Mingyu, this is...I love it.”

Mingyu laughed, handing him a paper plate. “I brought iced tea and hot coffee too. Which one do you want now?” 

“Iced tea? We can have the coffee with the cake later.” Minghao realised that Mingyu’s fingers had already begun untwisting the cap to the iced tea before he had even finished speaking. 

“Did you make all this yourself?” He piled a pancake, sausages, and some side dishes onto his plate first, munching on a piece of kimchi. It was slightly sweet, and not too spicy. 

“Yup. I love cooking and baking. Tell me which ones are your favourite and I can cook more of those next time.”

“Gosh, um.” He chomped on a mouthful of fried rice and squealed around it. “The fried rice. It reminds me of home. China, I mean. You even put sliced red chillies in! My mom used to do that.”

“Yeah?” Mingyu pushed the container to him. “Well, you can have the whole thing.” 

Minghao didn’t even argue because he figured it would end up being pointless. “Thank you.”

It was nice, this white noise of nature buzzing about them as they ate and talked about everything and nothing. They were at a perfect vantage point of the sun sinking past the horizon – the deep fiery orange glow faded, plummeting the greenery about them into a grey-black. 

Minghao took out his phone to snap a picture of the sunset. 

“What’s your favourite time of the day?” Mingyu piped up from where his head was on the ground. 

“Midnight,” he answered immediately. It had always been midnight, when he had the most time to himself, when he could pretend that everything was okay. 

“What about you?” He turned to look at Mingyu, thinking how pretty he looked with the last of the afternoon sun dappled on his tanned skin. 

“Dawn. I like when it’s the start of a new day.”

As they lapsed into the evening, Minghao found himself becoming more daring. Earlier, he’d sat across Mingyu, but now, he had shifted to rest his head close to where Mingyu’s knees were propped up at ninety degrees, his upper body flat on the mat as he scrolled through his phone. 

“Minghao?” He called. 

“Hmm?”

“Is it alright if we cuddle?”

Minghao could feel a blush blooming, so he kept his head down. His heart picked up speed, and he bit his lip. “Uhh, yeah, s-sure.”

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to. No pressure, swear.”

Minghao didn’t say anything, just got up and slid himself against Mingyu’s body, so that Mingyu’s chest was to his back. His heart was still pumping fast, but he thought that he needed to show him that he wanted it too.

He couldn’t see Mingyu’s face like this, but he imagined that he must have been smiling. A hand crept tentatively over his stomach, and he felt Mingyu nestle into his hair from behind.

“I really, really like you, Xu Minghao,” Mingyu whispered. “Really, really.”

Minghao shivered at the bold confession and at the way in which his breath tickled his ear. It was surreal, that someone who looked like Mingyu, who was soft and kind and beautiful, was saying these words to him.

He turned his body, willing himself to lift his eyes to face him head-on. He could hardly believe that it was his own hand brushing back Mingyu’s hair behind his ears. “Kim Mingyu, I know we only really just met, but I really, really like you too.”

Mingyu’s mouth split into a wide smile, and he coughed out a loud laugh that echoed across the expanse of the empty park that was theirs and theirs alone. He caught Minghao’s chin between his thumb and index finger, and before he knew it, he was bringing his mouth down to meet his.

The first thing that sprung to mind was how soft Mingyu’s lips were. It was soft in the way that he knew it would be velvety smooth if he ran his tongue over it. It felt so familiar too, like a cloudy dream he couldn’t quite grasp. 

He wanted to bite down hard on it to see how much it would redden and bruise, but Mingyu was already taking the kiss farther, slipping his tongue into his mouth. Minghao gasped, and he could feel him grin against his mouth.

Minghao pressed into Mingyu, pushing up into him, and that’s when Mingyu broke the kiss.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, the words coming out in a hurry as he scrambled to move off Minghao. “I didn’t mean to go that far.”

“I didn’t mind,” Minghao said, still a little dazed, but he too sat up and crossed his legs, hands coming together to clasp over his lap. He was glad for the windbreaker now, because the wind was picking up.

“Cold? I can pour us some hot coffee.” Minghao saw that Mingyu kept stealing glances at him, fingers shaking a little as he poured their drinks. If it weren’t for that, he wouldn’t have guessed that Mingyu was as flustered as he was.

“Thanks.” He accepted the cup gratefully, pulling the container with the cakes closer. He couldn’t wait to try them too – he had quite a sweet tooth, and he’d spotted that one of the cakes was green, which probably meant it was matcha. 

“Do you always cook up a storm for all your dates?”

“I only know one date.” 

Minghao rolled his eyes. “Do you always cook for your friends, then?”

Mingyu sipped on his coffee, head bobbing forward. “Yup. They’re my guinea pigs. Jeonghan’s my favourite - he’ll eat most things, so I always make the craziest stuff for him to try. There was one time I made kimchi and white chocolate pasta. That was...something else.” He laughed. 

Minghao wasn’t sure which one of them was Jeonghan from the few photos that Mingyu had shared with him, but they all looked so beautiful, too pretty or handsome or both.

“So how did that taste like?”

“Jeonghan loved it. But then again, it’s Jeonghan. You can never really tell if he means something or if he’s just having fun. I love him.”

Something flamed in his chest, and Minghao didn’t like that feeling. He looked around, trying to distract himself and squash the burning envy.

“This place can look a little scary at night, but with you, it looks kind of magical.” Minghao took a bite of the matcha cake as he surveyed their surroundings - nothing but the wide green fields, the tall, imposing trees all around them, and the trails that could have led to anywhere. 

“Magical?” Mingyu chuckled. “That’s interesting.”

“I’m serious! You don’t think so? I mean, you’re the one who comes here a lot.”

“I just never expected you to describe this as magical. I’m surprised.”

“Oh.”

Mingyu shuffled towards him, moving to pack the mostly containers back into his bag. Minghao stuck his plastic fork into the last of the matcha cake and dangled it in front of Mingyu, quirking his eyebrow up. 

He expected him to say no, to say that Minghao could have it all, but then Mingyu was looking at him, eyes hooded and flooded with heat and mischief. He bent his head down, mouth sucking the last piece onto his tongue, eyes never leaving Minghao’s. 

He cast his eyes around the field beyond them, like he was warring with himself. When he looked back at Minghao, his eyes had set into something like determination, like he'd made a decision only he himself knew. Minghao tilted his chin up in a _what is it_ expression.

“Wanna see something really ‘magical’ then?”

Minghao’s hand shook where it was still held out. “What do you mean?” 

“Exactly what I said. Magical.” The way he said ‘magical’ made Minghao think less of parlour tricks and circus shows, and more of witchery, for some reason. 

He nodded slowly, brows wrinkling in half-confusion, half-disbelief. 

Mingyu just smiled, like he expected him to be that sceptical. 

“You said you imagined this place to be magical. Close your eyes and think about what you want to see. Don’t tell me, just think it.”

“Um, okay.” Minghao closed his eyes dutifully, inhaling deeply for dramatic effect, ruminating on what to conjure. 

He thought about the fantastical worlds in his games, thought how awesome it would be to see some troll trampling across the field, but the image that kept rolling back to the centre of his mind was just fireflies. 

So that was what he held in his mind. 

“Done?” Mingyu’s voice filtered through, sotto voce, to not distract him. 

“Yeah,” he breathed. 

“Alright. Now open your eyes.”

He lifted his eyes open slowly, because half of him was eager for this magic to be real. He looked at a copse of wide-leafed trees just next to them, the leaves glittering a luminescent yellow. 

“Oh my god...” Minghao murmured. Tiny yellow lights dotted the trees, flashing and fading at random – it was like the tree was breathing, and each short breath it took was matched by a pulse of warm light. 

“How are you doing this!” Minghao breathed out, eyes full of wonder as he looked back at Mingyu. 

“There were always fireflies there. You just were able to see it. And now they’re here.” He reached out a hand, and one of the lights left the trees to flutter to his palm. 

“See? It’s real.” He took Minghao’s hand, tumbling the bug onto it. Minghao was frozen in place, because seeing was believing, and he was seeing fireflies that he’d made up in his head appear in the flesh. He wondered if there would have really been a troll if he’d tried. 

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t try to. Just let it happen.” 

“Mingyu,” Minghao waved his hand wildly to get the firefly to fly off. It buzzed noisily, rejoining its kin back on the branches. “Mingyu, I’m scared. This is amazing, but I’m scared. What –”

“Am I? You can’t think of a less generic question than that?”

All at once, the shimmering lights turned eerie, and his skin crawled. Where he’d felt safe, he now felt so vulnerable, placing his life in the hands of a complete stranger. Not even Soonyoung knew where he was. He’d just told him he was meeting him at Cheonho. Fuck, he was so stupid. 

“Minghao, calm down. You’re starting to hyperventilate.” Mingyu had his hands out, palms facing him in surrender. 

“You’re not helping,” he managed to choke out, eyes going wide with terror as Mingyu moved closer to him. He opened his mouth to scream, arms criss-crossing over his legs as he tried to stand. 

“Hao, holy fuck.” Mingyu lunged towards him, engulfing his body with his own. Minghao yelled, fists battering against his chest. He was going to die here, and this was far more dramatic than what he’d always envisioned. 

“Minghao, I’m not going to hurt you, so will you stop screaming and hitting me?” He had his hands wrapped loosely around his wrists, thighs straddling his own, body curled over Minghao’s on the ground. It was clear that he was really trying to be as gentle as possible while making sure that Minghao didn’t run. The hallmark of some psychopath, Minghao thought to himself. 

“If I get off you, will you please not attempt to run? You’ll get lost trying to find your way out of here.”

“Will you tell me what the fuck that was then?” His legs were still tight, poised to push him off and make a dash for it if he could. 

“Okay. Okay.” He ran his hands up and down his face, brushing his fringe away from his forehead as he sat back, drawing his knees to his chest. “My family owns this land. So the spirits here do our bidding. I can’t say anything more than that, I’m sorry.”

Minghao just stared, quietly absorbing this. He tilted his head to the side, eyes roving up and down Mingyu’s face, taking in the pure earnestness, the honest eyes. Spirits. There were a lot of ghost stories in China too, and Minghao had never found them frightening. They were more sad, if anything. 

“Why did you take me here, then? If you knew that you wouldn’t be able to explain this properly.”

“I didn’t mean to show you anything. I just wanted to take you to one of my safe havens. I didn’t think I would end up doing this” – here, he gestured to the still glowing trees – “I got carried away.” 

“Carried away?” Minghao flopped his head back down to the ground, shutting his eyes so he wouldn’t see the mesmerising light that seemed to emanate from Mingyu’s eyes or the chilling, ghostly flickers on the trees. “This isn’t really something you put out on a first date.”

“You made me feel like I could. And that I could trust you with this.” Mingyu muttered. Minghao felt a stray finger tracing his closed eyelids. “You’re not the type to kiss and tell either.” There he went again, talking like he knew Minghao so well. 

“I don’t really know what to say to that,” he answered honestly. 

“You’re not running or screaming, so that’s good enough for me.” 

“It’s probably because my body is still in shock. How am I sure that you’re not lying to me?”

“I wouldn’t,” Mingyu insisted. 

“I only have your word, and we only just met,” Minghao shot back. “This is crazy. I’m crazy.”

“Maybe a little.” Mingyu smiled a small smile. 

“You’re not offended that I just called you crazy?”

“You just saw fireflies sprout on trees from nowhere. I can afford to be a little bit generous.”

“Okay. So. Ghosts. Ghosts made the fireflies happen.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“And you can’t tell me anything more than that.”

“That was a better summary than anyone else in my family would have given you.”

“What kind of summary would they have given me, then?”

Mingyu closed his mouth, and Minghao felt like he knew the answer already. 

He tapped Mingyu’s hand with a finger. 

“I wanted it to be a troll at first, honestly. Would that have happened?”

Mingyu regarded him for a very long second, his expression unreadable.

Then he was covering his body with his again, and Minghao found that he was letting the kiss happen, even wound his arms around his neck to draw him closer.

***

“I need to go home.”

“It’s only eleven,” Minghao observed, his IKEA digital clock blinking back the time in bright red. “And I thought you were staying the weekend.”

They were both curled around each other in Minghao’s bed, Mingyu’s legs slipping in-between his own, a hand resting on his clothed stomach, fingers inching bravely under his t-shirt. Minghao’s dad was travelling yet again, which left the entire house free for them to roam and be undisturbed as they rolled around in bed. 

They hadn’t seen each other since a week ago at the park, because Minghao had had to visit relatives and go on a roundabout trip across Japan, taking the high-speed trains from Hokkaido to Sapporo to Kyushu and back to Tokyo. Minghao wanted to more than make up for it by staying in bed the whole weekend. 

He had to be careful when texting Mingyu around his relatives, which meant they had hardly spoken. He hadn’t even really spoken to Soonyoung – that was how much he didn’t want to reveal his private life to his nosy aunties and uncles. 

“Um, yeah. Ansan is a couple of hours away. I need to run some errands.”

Minghao lifted a brow. “Don’t you live in Seoul?”

“Ansan is my childhood home.”

“Ugh, okay.” He burrowed back into Mingyu’s neck, pressing his nose into the curve of his shoulder. “What errands?”

“Firefly-type errands,” he said, and Minghao’s heart leaped. One part of him had chalked it up to a fever dream, and he hadn’t thought that Mingyu would have brought it up again so soon. It was too wild, too unworldly. 

“Oh.”

“Yup.” Mingyu snaked a hand around his waist to pull him closer. “Scared?”

“No,” Minghao whispered, even as a lump formed in his throat. He wanted Mingyu to drop the subject, to pretend that Minghao hadn’t witnessed that spectacle or called the fireflies into being. 

“Curious?”

Minghao bit his lip, considering. “A little.”

“Want to come with me?”

The room fell into silence, the question looming heavily above them. Minghao was afraid of what he would see if he said yes, and he was afraid of what he would see on Mingyu’s face if he said no. 

“Just to see where I grew up. No magic.”

Minghao hadn’t even known that his shoulders had been so tight and strung up until they dropped, and he immediately felt guilty at the relief that swirled in his stomach. He was sure that Mingyu felt how much his body relaxed; they were still pressed so close. 

“Will it take the whole day?” He still wanted to lie in bed. 

“We’ll be there and back before you know it. I promise. Say you’ll come with me, please? I hate going back there alone.”

That was all it took to make up his mind, really. Minghao wanted to know more about Mingyu, and he wasn’t sure whether Mingyu would make this offer to him again. 

“Okay. But...you promise?” He asked shakily. 

“I promise.” He rolled Minghao to face him, kissing his cheek before planting one on his mouth. 

Minghao shrieked when he licked along his neck, hands coming up to push against his shoulders instinctively. 

“God, when you make that face...” Mingyu trailed off, leaning back in to kiss his neck.

“Ohhhh.” He seized up, toes curling as he felt the blood rush south. “Gyu, wait, wait. I –” 

He bit down, hard, and Minghao swallowed a shrill cry in his throat as he saw stars explode from behind his eyes and all he could see even with his eyes wide open was black. 

He felt more than saw Mingyu arrange himself until he was on top of him, kissing him languidly, Minghao carding his fingers through his soft hair. 

“Are we leaving soon?” He croaked out against Mingyu’s mouth, which sent him into a fit of laughter. 

“Yes, we are.” He pecked him fondly on the nose and climbed off him. 

“I’ll go get my bag and we can go.”

Minghao nodded, feeling the absence of his warmth as Mingyu leapt off the bed. He spread his arms and legs out, grabbing his phone so that he could send a message to Soonyoung. He felt a little bad for not texting him as much over the last few days, even though it wasn’t wholly his fault. 

He saw that Soonyoung had left a string of messages about Japan and Mingyu, with the last message a crying face because he hadn’t replied to him in hours. 

_“Hey, omg please don’t barge over. I’m gg to Ansan with Mingyu.”_

Barely a second later, Soonyoung was calling him. 

“YOU’RE GOING ON A TRIP WITH YOUR BOYFRIEND AND YOU DIDN’T THINK TO TELL ME UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE?”

“He’s not my...boyfriend,” he gritted out in hushed tones, particularly lowering his voice at the word ‘boyfriend’. “Would you please calm down? He’s just showing me his family home while running some errands.”

“In Ansan? Like, an hour away?”

“I guess? I’m just tagging along.”

“And meeting the family so soon?”

Minghao had forgotten how ridiculously persistent Soonyoung could be, like an overbearing older brother. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.”

“What’s the address? Send it to me.” 

“Soonyoung!” 

“Minghao! I need to know you’ll be safe!”

“Is that Soonyoung? Hi, Soonyoung,” Mingyu piped up from the doorway. 

“Yeah. Mingyu says hi!” Minghao shouted into the phone, putting as much chirpiness as he could muster while talking over Soonyoung’s screeches that were coming through the phone. “We’re just leaving to grab a bite. I’ll text you later. I’ll let you know what we ate, don’t worry, I’m keeping to the New Us, finding ourselves thing.”

Minghao put down the phone, hoping that Soonyoung got his message. He turned on the tracker to his phone, the app that they both shared because Soonyoung was wont to disappear on his treks around the city for his project and needed help finding his way to a bus stop. 

“New Us?” Mingyu grinned. “What was that about?”

“Just our new tagline. Soonyoung decided I was too boring and needed to get out of my shell. So we’ve been trying out new food and places.”

“Was Tinder a part of it?” He cocked his brow. 

Minghao sighed. “Yeah, it was. Shut up.”

Mingyu just laughed, bouncing happily forward to swing Minghao around the room. “Hey, it was a great call. Else we wouldn’t have met.”

Minghao looked down at the floor and smiled. “Yeah, we wouldn’t have.” We’re worlds apart, he thought. 

“Thank you.” Mingyu bent to kiss his forehead. 

“For going on Tinder?”

Mingyu giggled but shook his head. “No, for not telling Soonyoung that we were going to my family home. I just want it to be our own secret, for now.”

“Of course,” Minghao whispered, fingers bunching guiltily into his shirt as he stepped up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. 

Mingyu stepped back and took his hand. “Come on. It’s just an hour’s drive, but let’s get some food first. There’s hardly any convenience stores on the way.”

***

What Mingyu had neglected to tell him was that they needed to get a horde of supplies beforehand.

The early afternoon was spent dragging his feet after him as he popped into hole-in-the-wall shops, most of which were shabby-looking, with tattered curtains and worn doormats, or scratched-up doors. Minghao had never known that Seoul could look so rough and drabby. The shops looked more foreign than Korean too, which added to the chilly sensation tingling along his spine. What made matters worse was that Minghao wasn’t allowed to come in, meaning he was left stranded by the pavements and a victim to all sorts of leering stares. 

“You can’t, Hao. You need to stay outside.”

“Why? I don’t even know where we really are. I don’t feel like getting mugged in broad daylight, thank you very much.”

“You won’t,” he said fiercely. “I’ll be right out. And like you said, it’s daylight. I’ll only be a minute.”

After the fourth instance, Minghao was getting extremely pissed off, and he showed it. 

Mingyu, for his part, was really apologetic. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t think that I needed to get so much stuff, but I really do have to. This is the last stop, and then we’re leaving. Promise.”

“That’s what you said the last time. What are you even getting anyway? Do you even really need me here?”

“I thought you said you didn’t want to know about all the magic stuff.” Mingyu said haughtily. It was clear that he wasn’t the sort to back down from a fight. 

Minghao jerked his chin up, but his eyes lost its fury at the mention of the magic. 

“Fine. But I’m still annoyed that you’ve just left me out here. Every place has been weird and creepy. I just. Can we just leave? Please?”

“Fine.” Minghao moved around him to get to the car door, but Mingyu stepped in front of him, weaving a hand around his neck so he could tip his head up to kiss him. 

Minghao stumbled back in panic, looking around them. “We’re in public!” 

“So?”

“So? So?!” He caught a smirk from Mingyu and decided it wasn’t worth it. “Fuck it, let’s just get in the car.”

“After you.”

Minghao settled into the passenger seat, folding his arms petulantly as Mingyu revved up the engine. He didn’t look at or speak to him the entire drive, choosing to look out the window and watch as the tall buildings morphed into wide empty plains of barren land or long stretches of traditional Korean homes. 

After about an hour, the car turned into a circular pathway, which looped around in concentric circles, like they were driving up onto a hill. 

This must be his home, Minghao thought. It looks like the size of a palace ground. And Minghao thought himself rich. 

“This is where you live?” As they climbed out of the car, a pure monstrosity of a mansion overlooked the gravel driveway. Minghao’s jaw loosened into an ‘O’.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Mingyu drew him deeper into the estate, gently, by their intertwined fingers. Wild clumps of African violets sprouted in odd patches all over the garden. They looked wilted, some petals even crushed against others. It took Minghao another few seconds of intent staring to realise that they were long dead but had somehow retained a shade of purple – frozen forever like this. The further down they walked along the widow’s walk, the more overcast it got, like a shadow hovering perpetually above the house.

“If we’re talking sarcastically, then yes, humble.” 

He lifted his feet carefully, so careful to keep to the stone footpath. Tall stems of grass flanked each side, waving in the light breeze. He walked further on, guided solely by Mingyu’s soft pull on his hand. Cracked porch steps. Hanging vines. Creepers twisted into the white columns. A bronze seraphim stood atop a fountain bereft of water, chubby fingers pointing to the house. It looked like it was smiling. 

There was a brush of a thumb across his knuckles, slow and meant to calm, as if Mingyu knew how spooked he was. 

“No one’s really lived here in years.” Mingyu brought their joined hands up to kiss his fingers, and then untangled their hands so he could flit to the windows and peek through the dust-washed glass. When he walked, he almost glided. 

“So people have been _kind of_ living here?” Minghao couldn’t help but ask.

“I’ve family in Japan – I remember some distant cousins staying here while they were passing through. But that was probably a long time ago.”

He was still on his tiptoes, fingers perched lightly on the sill as he tried to survey the interior of the house from outside. Minghao didn’t know why he wouldn’t just go through the front door. A sudden draft picked up, and his sleeveless shirt ruffled in the wind, hair tossed askew. He shivered, covering his bare arms with his hands.

“Gyu, why don’t we just go in? It’s cold.”

“Can’t. The caretaker’s not here.” 

“So? This is your house.”

Mingyu pulled off his outer shirt, leaving him in a light sky blue sweater. It’d only just occurred to Minghao that he was dressed rather warmly for September. 

“Caretaker’s not here, which means something’s up. Stay here.” He bunched up his sleeves to his forearms, rolled his shoulders back and forth a few times, biceps flexed. He bounced on the balls of his feet. Minghao rather thought he was gearing up for a fight rather than a visit home.

“Gyu…”

“Here,” Mingyu jogged up to him, pressing his sweater into his hands. “Put this on. Stay on the path. Please.” He bent down to kiss his cheek, and Minghao coloured at the sudden intimacy. 

“Please, please just listen to me and don't argue, Minghao,” he murmured, lips now at his ear. “Promise me.” There was an urgency and unease to his voice that Minghao didn’t expect to ever hear from him; he was always so confident. 

The wind picked up again, pinpricks of cold dotting his exposed arms once more. Quickly, he pulled on Mingyu’s sweater, snuggling briefly into the collar, breathing in lavender. But even cloaked, the chill didn’t leave him. The house seemed almost a dark grey beneath the sky now, and his stomach lurched when he thought he saw something flit across the window on the second floor.

“Okay. Okay, I’ll stay here,” he croaked out. His fingers dug into the ends of the sweater. “But don’t take too long.”

Mingyu didn’t answer, but his eyes filled with relief. He gave him another kiss on the cheek and turned around, taking quick, light steps to the house, rounding the corner to the back, avoiding the main entrance yet again.

When Mingyu was out of sight, Minghao allowed his shoulders to sag. His knees felt like they would give way to the ground any minute. He slid down and sat cross-legged on the hard stone before that could happen. The stone was cool and smooth to the touch – a different kind of cold, the nice kind of cold when it was too hot out and you needed a spike of air-conditioning or a cool spring breeze. 

He touched his fingertips to it, and spread his palms flat against the surface. Mingyu’s hesitance to enter and his bit about the caretaker sent goosebumps pimpling on his skin, so he forced himself to take deep gusts of air, stamping out any ugly thoughts and streams of what-ifs.

It was barely autumn, but Minghao almost felt like this place was caught in a constant snow globe of autumn and winter - never petering out into spring or summer. He had only been here less than ten minutes, but already he found it hard to draw a picture of this place covered in sunbeams, with sunflowers and daisies alive and dancing in the wind. 

And he didn’t think that it was because they were in the countryside, or not in a particularly urban part of town. No, this place was probably always this dreary. Minghao knew it – could feel this certainty deep in his bones. And he was scared. He closed his eyes, focusing on just the in-out of his breathing, one-two, and the fuzzy sound of the stale air and nothingness about the estate surrounding him that buzzed about his ears.

The pavement pounded against his hands, like a mini earthquake. 

The pounding grew harder, and the ground shook, but he didn’t dare open his eyes. His hand felt slick all of a sudden, like he had touched something cold and wet. 

Someone was running, hard. His eyes shot open just in time to see Mingyu bounding up to him, eyes wild, steps set at a frenetic pace. 

“What’s wrong?” He sprang to his feet, senses steadied for the unexpected. His blood thundered in his head, and he felt a little dizzy.

“Inside. Let’s go inside, quickly.” He clamped a hand around his wrist and made a break for the front door - finally. Minghao didn’t even have time to ask another question or make another sound. Their feet stomped loudly against the ground, and their momentum sent Mingyu’s shoulder crashing heavily against the door. But he must have been too pumped up with adrenaline – neither groaning in pain or stopping to catch a breath - fingers fumbling with his jeans pocket to yank out a set of large keys. They were metallic grey, powdered all around with rusted copper brown from age or disuse.

The key turned, and the door groaned loudly as Mingyu pushed it open. He dragged Minghao inside, slamming the door and flicking the lock back in place. 

Minghao panted from where he’d collapsed to the carpeted floor. “Okay,” he panted, chest heaving, “what the fuck was that all about?”

The carpet dug its rough and coarse fibres into his palms. It was a dark red – almost like blood when dried. Minghao shifted his body a little and made out that he was sitting on a single red rose in the centre that bloomed outward into strands of thorny stems that curled chaotically over and under each other, until he couldn’t tell one from the other. 

Sconces of lightbulbs decorated the hallway, but none were on - only a huge chandelier with at least fifty stalactite-shaped crystals twinkling and raining down bright yellow light onto them. Mingyu must have flicked that on when they’d entered. 

The entrance was massive - a marble tabletop with a vase of orchids and roses that stretched out over the table length loomed large and lonely. Then there were the rows of paintings of flora and fauna lining each side of the wall, as if welcoming owner and guest alike. He spotted one of a deer and another of a wolf, both their heads bent equally low in supplication. A red liquid seemed to drip from their mouths. 

He shuddered.

“Later, okay? I need to get something from my room.”

“Mingyu -“

“It’s upstairs on the third floor. I don’t think you want to be left alone in the hall now, do you?”

Minghao glared at him but stood up, ignoring Mingyu’s proffered hand. Mingyu caught his hand anyway. Jerked him back into his arms, those strong, warm arms. 

“Minghao,” he breathed into his ear, into his hair. “Don’t be angry with me, please? I know it’s not been a great day, but I need to do this first. Then we’ll go. I’ll take you back to my apartment – we can have dinner in bed all weekend. I’ll make dumplings. How’s that?”

It was irritatingly inviting. Mingyu always knew just what to say, at the right time. The words rolled around his head silky smooth like melting butter, made his head greasy, unable to grip onto anything logical. It felt safe, like in a nest tucked far up and away from danger. 

“I...” Minghao leaned into his chest, spacing out, eyes wet and glimmering from the piercing yellow of the monstrous chandelier dangling overhead. 

He shut his eyes, shaking his head vigorously to expunge the heady blanket. “Fine. Let’s go.”

The hallway led to the dining area that melded with a large kitchen. There was a stale smell that lingered there, like damp clothes left out too long. He felt queasy. If he stayed another ten minutes he was sure he would throw up on the scuffed parquet floor. 

The climb up wasn’t hard, but Minghao still felt out of breath from holding his breath the whole way through. The staircase felt new, bannisters that were woven into intricate webs of leaves and flowers built out of wrought-iron metal. 

“Your family seems to really love nature,” he noted. His fingers traced the curl of a jagged leaf at the top of the stairs, fascinated.

“Mmm.” Mingyu stepped forward and slid a hand around his waist. He seemed more at ease, now that they were inside. “Do you like it?” He lined his body up against Minghao’s, until Minghao was trapped between the bannister and Mingyu. 

“Like what?”

“The paintings. The staircase. The house.” A hand slid to the small of his back, trailing under his shirt, pads kneading softly into the tiny twin dips there. Minghao keened a little, a small gasp escaping his lips. 

“I...I don’t know? It’s different.”

Mingyu laughed and bumped his forehead against Minghao’s. “Different good?” He tested.

Minghao paused, panic overlaying his brief spike in pleasure the longer he fumbled for an answer. He didn’t want Mingyu to think that he didn’t like the house. It was creepy, yes, but then, all houses were when deserted. 

“I don’t...I don’t hate it. I just –”

Mingyu kissed him then, shutting him up, slipping his tongue into his mouth. He pulled back quickly, too quickly that Minghao could have been fooled to believe that the kiss hadn’t happened. 

“I know. I’m not upset, Minghao. This house reeks of sadness. It’s different, and definitely not typical of a house in South Korea, that’s for sure.” He pushed Minghao further into the bannister until it ground into his back so much that it started to feel painful. “So many of my ancestors have died here. I used to bury my head under the covers every night, because I was afraid of what I might see if I opened my eyes.”

And then he was leaning the both of them over the edge, Minghao’s back meeting no resistance save for Mingyu’s hand against his spine. “Do you know what I used to see?”

Minghao shook his head no. He didn’t want to hear it. “No. But I don’t really want to,” he said quickly.

“Did you see anything while I was looking for the caretaker?”

His eyes flicked to his hand, but he said nothing. Mingyu noticed the movement, and his eye twitched. He pushed against Minghao again, further and further until he could feel nothing but a void behind him.

Minghao’s eyes widened in fear, and his hands scrabbled at Mingyu’s collar. “Mingyu. Mingyu, stop, we’re going to fall off!”

Minghao’s feet were off the floor now, dangling uselessly in the air bracketing Mingyu’s hips as he bent the two of them even further over the railing. He was so strong. He could throw him over just like that, as if he weighed as much as a feather. 

The ground seemed to rush up to him from below, and Minghao turned his eyes away swiftly. When he looked back at Mingyu, he found a set of dark eyes, sticky with danger and want, boring into him. He looked like a wolf now, not like the subservient one in the picture, but one with cold eyes on its prey, teeth glinting with the knowledge of its impending victory. His stomach dipped. 

“Do you trust me, Minghao? Trust me with your life?”

Minghao didn’t answer. Just tightened his grip around the neckline of Mingyu’s sweater. He could feel the arm around his waist constrict even more, and Minghao could feel the underside of his eyes throb and quake. Mingyu was waiting for his answer, and Minghao felt like that answer would make the difference between a cracked skull and him being planted safely back on the third floor. He thought back to the blood-red carpet.

“How many have thrown themselves off of here?” He whispered. 

Mingyu laughed, and there was something like satisfaction and awe in his eyes. He pulled Minghao closer to his chest, fingers cinching even more around him, grounding him. “None. They were afraid that three storeys wouldn’t be high enough to finish the job.”

He lifted him so that Minghao was now sitting on the railing, legs locked tightly around Mingyu’s waist, Mingyu’s arms back around his body, wrapped protectively about him. 

So that he knows that I know he’s got me, Minghao thinks to himself. 

“So they killed themselves somewhere else on this property?” He didn’t really know what to say, only knew what he shouldn’t. And it was better to show him that he was actually scared. 

He could feel the nothingness of the air behind him and the three-storey drop below, but he schooled his face into one of curiosity, curled a finger around a strand of his hair, stroking his cheek too. Mingyu smiled, his eyes still sparkling with residual specks of danger. Leaned into the touch like a cat would to his owner. 

“Mmm,” Mingyu nodded easily, and leaned up to kiss him. He hummed against his mouth, and Minghao couldn’t help but moan a little too. Mingyu licked deeper into his mouth and he found himself bending forward, limbs clawing at and digging into Mingyu as he did so. 

“Are we going up to your bedroom?”

Mingyu gave a series of short kisses, savouring the softness of Minghao’s lips and how they reddened with each new kiss. “In time. Do you trust me?” He asked again. 

“I trust that I’m not going to be the first to die by leaping off the railing.”

A soft chuckle rang in his ear. “Good answer,” Mingyu whispered. His eyes were still as dark as earlier, almond-shaped eyes narrowing into even thinner slits as he smiled up at him. His tongue peeked out together with his canine front teeth and he looked more beguiling than even two minutes ago. It was the type of look where anyone would have given themselves up to in a club or a rave, and Minghao was hovering dangerously close to that. 

“I meant it.” He tangled his fingers into Mingyu’s dark hair, brushing the smooth strands back, earning another pleased look. Minghao leaned backwards teasingly, feeling Mingyu’s hands flex and stiffen around him. Vindication. “Really. I trust you.”

Mingyu nipped at his neck. “You’re playing with fire.” He murmured it in a sing-song voice, but Minghao could sense that he wasn’t joking. 

“How many have killed themselves here?” He marvelled at how easy he was finding it to ask him these questions. 

He could feel Mingyu’s lips at his throat when he answered. “Too many.”

He lifted him and set him back onto solid ground. Minghao saw his eyes flick to Minghao and then trail down to the ground floor, misting all over with an incomprehensible look. He put a hand to his cheek, nudging him back to the here and now. 

“Bedroom?”

Mingyu took his hand from his cheek, and Minghao knew that he was going to kiss it. He did, and predictably intertwined them. “Bedroom.”

The way to Mingyu’s room required snaking through darkened corridors. Each time they passed by a door, Minghao would think that they had arrived, only for Mingyu to float pass with him in tow. No light penetrated the passageways save for the weakening sunlight filtering through the odd window or two built into a lone panel. It was nearing dusk now, and soon, the house would truly be drenched in complete darkness.

Finally, Mingyu stopped in the middle of the next corridor. The door before them looked just like the others they had passed. He knocked once and paused. Minghao drew in a breath, half-expecting to hear a knock on the other side.

A beat passed, and Mingyu simply nodded.

He turned the handle, the knob giving a loud squeak. Mingyu turned and flashed a gentle smile, pouring reassurance into it. “Won’t be long.”

Mingyu’s room was at least twice the size of his own, and that was saying something, because Minghao’s room occupied half an entire floor. Where had all the space come from? There were surely other rooms just a couple of metres away, weren’t there? They’d passed by so many doors along the same corridor. Minghao did a little spin around the room in wonder. 

“Don’t look too hard, you’ll get a headache,” Mingyu cautioned from where he was hunched over boxes of books. He began pulling them out by their spines, flipping through each page speedily and chucking them onto the floor behind him with a disgruntled expression. 

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly that. Just stay there and don’t touch anything.”

“I could help?” He fluttered his hands uselessly in front of his stomach. 

“No, you can’t. I said to stay there.” His tone was gruff, and it stung a little to hear it directed at him. 

Minghao huffed despite the fear that crept up on him. “Fine. I’ll stay here like your fucking dog. I’ve been yanked about all day anyway.”

Mingyu chose to ignore him, too focused on whipping through each page, tearing some of them off from their spines. Minghao wasn’t particularly fond of books or of reading, but he felt a spike of guilt watching how the books were being so carelessly treated. 

“Isn’t that kind of disrespectful?”

“They’re meant to be torn off.” Mingyu ripped another page off. “Ha! Found you.” He gathered the loose pages into a bundle and stuffed them into a brown satchel on the floor. 

It was truly odd, the items that were in Mingyu’s room. No bed, but rather a futon, no lights but a kerosene lamp. Candles that were broken into two scattered about a corner, bits of wax flaking the wooden floor. Then there was the coat rack on which hung a thick woollen coat, fur lining the collar and the interior. 

No toys, or any accessories to show that someone had spent their childhood here. 

“Um, Gyu? Was this always your room growing up?”

The boy before him looked up from the ground, his dark hair curling into large wisps about his forehead as he shook his head as if to clear his thoughts rather than in answer. 

“Like I said, don’t look too hard, Hao.”

He crawled forward, making quick work of dumping the books back into the boxes. Then he was pushing the boxes back into their original places as if they hadn’t been haphazardly arranged in the first place. He saw him line a candle into an awkward angle, then swept the floor clean of the new scuff marks made on the boards, courtesy of his boots. 

Minghao stared as he watched this strange fixing-up. 

“There. Everything back in its place.” Mingyu reached out for his hand. “Let’s go.”

He took the hand and held his tongue, gripping it just a little bit tighter when he saw a streak of copper-red on the wall he passed. 

When Mingyu had closed the door, he knocked just once like before and waited for the right number of seconds to tick by. 

As they walked back the way they had come, Minghao could have sworn that he heard the tiniest sound of a fist against wood, knocking back in reply.

***

It was only when they were in the car, rolling off and away from Ansan, that Minghao dared to broach the subject. 

“What did you need those papers for?” 

“Minghao, can we please not do this now,” Mingyu said wearily. 

“You said you would tell me later.”

“Tomorrow.” His hands shook around the wheel. The satchel carrying the sheaf of torn-out papers was slung protectively around his front, as if they would vanish if he so much as let go. 

“You won’t tell me anything tomorrow. You’ll ignore me, won’t you? But you owe me a fucking answer, for dragging me all the way to Ansan. If you don’t tell me now, I’m going to tell Soonyoung –.”

“Tell Soonyoung what? That you corporealised fireflies? That we have ghosts floating about the estate?”

Minghao glared but that shut him up right and proper. Hearing exactly those words from Mingyu’s mouth only confirmed that anyone who heard it would think he was stark-raving mad, Soonyoung included.

“Fuck you, Mingyu.”

“Fuck, Minghao, I’ll tell you. But I just need us to be out of here. We need to get out and into Seoul before the sun sets.”

“Why? Because the caretaker wasn’t there so bad things will happen?”

“It’s not something to joke about.”

“Then tell me!” 

“When we’re home,” Mingyu grit out. “I promise.”

“I saw blood on the wall.”

Mingyu swept his hair off his forehead, sighing in resignation. “That wasn’t all you saw, was it?”

Minghao turned away from him, arms crossed. He felt a phantom trickle of cold on his hand. “I don’t know what I saw.”

“No, you don’t. You’re not supposed to.”

“Then why did you even bring me there!” Minghao cried. He slammed his fists into his lap. 

“Because I can’t go back by myself. It freaks me out.”

“Tell me about the caretaker,” he insisted. He felt like he didn’t know anything anymore, didn’t know himself and how he could be this calm. He wasn’t normally like this.

Mingyu’s hands squeezed even tighter around the wheel. 

“The caretaker anchors the house. If he’s not there, I don’t go in.”

“But…but we went in…”

“We had to. I miscalculated. They’d seen you already – there was no other choice.”

“Miscalculated what? And who saw me? You said this trip wouldn’t have any magic involved!”

Mingyu slammed his hands on the wheel. “Damn it, Minghao, my family is _all_ about the magic. Those papers...they were for business. Sometimes we need references for the work that we do. Background on our partners, stuff like that." 

He looked like he knew he had revealed too much.

"And the references were in your room?"

Mingyu sighed. "It was my room, but it wasn't really mine either. It belonged to a relative too, a long time ago. We don't really own things, in the end."

Minghao didn't understand anything about what he had just said. 

"So that wasn't your room?" He struggled to keep up.

"Just a shadow of it. It's the magic. We can’t really run away from our ancestors."

“Then why did you have to drag me in?”

The answer was in his eyes, but Mingyu couldn’t bring himself to be selfish enough to say it. 

“I don’t know,” he whispered instead, foot pressing harder on the accelerator, their car speeding up and away from the mansion. Minghao could still see it in the distance, now that he knew where it was exactly. It was as if the house was always just in their rearview mirror, no matter how fast or far Mingyu drove.

“I don’t know.”

***

They ended up going their separate ways, after Ansan. Mingyu to his apartment, and Minghao to his. Minghao didn’t think that he could look at Mingyu and not remember how black his eyes had turned at the bannisters. 

Instead, he’d invited Soonyoung over. Mostly because Minghao couldn’t stand to be alone right now.

“How was Ansan?” They had situated themselves in the dining room instead of staying cooped up on the third floor. Soonyoung had decided to cook together for a change, and Minghao had welcomed the fact that his best friend knew him well enough to sense a distraction was needed.

“So-so,” he murmured offhandedly. Cooking was a trying experience, so even frying an egg was beyond a beginner’s level for him. He knew he’d already gotten a few scraps of egg shells in the mixture.

“Don’t lie. I googled your location and his house looks like a freaking Victorian mansion.” 

Minghao blew out a deep breath full of regret. 

“You were right to keep your tracker on,” Soonyoung said. “That house hasn’t been lived in for years. Who knows, he could have murdered you and buried you in that plot and no one would have known.”

“Soonyoung,” he scolded, although the memory of the carpet, the cold on his hand, the life-like paintings still had a deep imprint on his mind, and he couldn’t erase the frightening scenes of suicidal relatives his brain had come up with. “That wouldn’t have happened.” His voice was weak.

“Whatever. But really, what was it like inside? I don’t even know how many rooms they must have. Was it crumbling to bits or still well kept? Apparently, they have some sort of groundskeeper.”

MInghao swung his head up quickly at that. “How do you know that?”

Soonyoung looked offended. “Dude. I googled the place. And after that, it wasn’t that hard to look up the owners. You scored some rich as fuck kid, I can tell you that. Kim fucking Mingyu, billionaire extraordinaire. I don’t know what you did in your past life to deserve this.”

“Wait. What? Billionaire?”

“You don’t know?” 

No, he clearly didn’t. Minghao was a recluse, after all. He didn’t google search anyone – not even himself. And he certainly hadn’t thought of searching Mingyu on Google. Following him on Instagram was already enough, wasn’t it?

Soonyoung thrust his phone in front of his face. “Look. Kim Mingyu, son of Kim Pyohan, property tycoon and well, I don’t know, business magnate. He’s got his finger in every pie there is.”

Minghao could see that. From oil and gas, to newspapers, to schools, to mining, to steel, to telecommunications – there wasn’t anything that their family wasn’t involved in. Oh my god.

“Oh my god, now I know why he looked familiar!” Soonyoung yelled into his ear. “Hao, he was at Wonwoo’s party!”

“Um, Wonwoo has a lot of parties.”

“Yeah, but it was _that_ party. The one we were actually invited to because Jihoon was his groupmate or something. Remember?”

His mind zipped to that party and he shook his head to clear images of a drunken Soonyoung kissing him at the stairs. Oh. _That_ party.

“Uh, okay, so? You saw him there?”

“Um, yes? Hello, earth to Minghao, he was so hot, how could I have not noticed him? I just didn’t know his name.”

Minghao rolled his eyes. “I thought you were too drunk to remember anything.”

“I never forget a gorgeous face. Besides, I remember kissing you.”

“Yeah, twice. I had to push you off before everyone thought we were dating.” Minghao didn’t want to dredge up the past, but it hurt less now that he had Mingyu.

“What are you talking about? I only kissed you once. Are you sure you weren’t the one who was drunk?”

Minghao put his spatula down onto the spoon rest, the fried egg now a scrambled one.

“No, it was twice. Once at the stairs, and the second in one of the guest bedrooms.”

Soonyoung’s face drained of colour when he shook his head. “No, Hao. After you pushed me off the first time, Seungkwan took me to the kitchen to get some water, and then I stayed there the whole night playing King’s Card. Hao, are you sure there was someone after me?”

It was Minghao’s turn to turn pale. If it wasn’t Soonyoung, he didn’t know who else it could be – didn’t want it to be anyone else. Anyone but…

He took himself back to that room, remembering how soft those lips were. “It’s so soft,” he remembered Soonyoung-not-Soonyoung saying. “You’re so pretty.” And then those lips had brushed against his before he had pushed him off, Minghao yelling at Soonyoung to pull himself together.

He focused on the lips, and the taste of something bitter, and a flash of canine teeth. 

He sagged against the cabinets, knees giving way to the floor. “No…it can’t be…”

“Minghao, what is it? Hao?” Soonyoung crouched down to eye-level, taking his face into his hands. “Hao, talk to me, love. What is it? Who was it?”

_Tell Soonyoung what? That you corporealised fireflies? That we have ghosts floating about the estate?_

And then, an even earlier one: _if you had to kill, what weapon would you use?_

Mingyu’s voice floated around him, and he was plunged into an icy bath of terror. No, knowing about his Ansan home would have to be as far as it went.

“Nothing. Nothing, I just. Remembered that one of the seniors had seen you with me and tried to tease me into kissing him too. I’d forgotten that he did kiss me, but I was too high on vodka to remember that it wasn’t you. Huh.”

“What the fuck. Who was it? I’ll kill him right now!” Soonyoung roared over the gush of blood churning in his brain. He felt like his head would implode at any moment. 

“No one important,” he muttered, a little faintly. “Just drop it, Soon. I want to eat ramyeon and forget that calories exist.”

Soonyoung eyed him warily but just squeezed his shoulder fondly. “Alright. I’m letting it go just this once, but only because you’ve got a hot soon-to-be boyfriend to make up for two shitty, drunken kisses.”

“It wasn’t shitty.” He found himself saying. 

“It wasn’t shitty?” Soonyoung repeated, his lips back to forming a smile, eyes twisting up into their signature crescent moons.

“You are far from shitty, Kwon Soonyoung.” Minghao got up from the floor, watching his best friend prance about the kitchen and dancing to BoA songs. Minghao thought that he would never not feel a pang of wistfulness every time he saw him this happy.

***

_“Can we meet?”_

Minghao had waited for when his dad was travelling again to send the text to Mingyu. It was mid-October now, one and a half weeks since Ansan, and the weather had turned even chillier and unpredictable.

_“Sure. When?"_

_“Now? At Gwangnaru.”_

Minghao imagined Mingyu smirking at the location. 

_“How about at the trinket shop around the corner from where we first had brunch?”_

It seemed like he wanted to play it his way, and Minghao was fine with that. 

_“Fine. See you in half an hour.”_

_“See you.”_

How did everything turn so cold?

He pulled on his sturdiest jacket and leggings, packing a portable charger, a lighter, and his passport into his backpack. He didn’t quite know what he was packing for. 

The last thing he did was pull open his bedside drawer, taking out a switchblade, brand new, and tucked it up the sleeve of his arm.

Then he was out of the apartment, turning out the lights and locking the door behind him.

The trinket shop wasn’t hard to find, because he’d distinctly remembered Mingyu pointing it out on during their very first meal out. It had an eccentric display of woollen dreamcatchers and cotton bunnies in the window. It occurred to him now that his family probably owned that, too.

“Minghao.” Mingyu was dressed in all black, like a reaper – black cloak, black jeans, black beanie framing his ears. Minghao wished that he didn’t like how he said his name as much as he did.

“Mingyu.” He crossed the distance between them, and they stood in the autumn chill, inches apart, but still very much strangers to each other.

“Shall we?”

Minghao nodded, and took the lead for once, pushing the door to the shop open. It didn’t escape him that the sign said it was closed, had half been expecting it, even. No matter.

“You told Soonyoung about Ansan.” 

It wasn’t accusatory, and Minghao frankly couldn’t care enough to be defensive. 

“And you lied about never having met me before.”

Mingyu snorted, and that irked him even more. “So you remembered.”

“Only a few days ago.”

Mingyu merely nodded. “That was my first time meeting you. And I couldn’t get you out of my mind, after that. I needed to see you again.”

Minghao didn’t think he could have left such a significant impression on someone like Mingyu, but he wasn’t sure what to believe from him anymore.

“You knew I’d be on Tinder.” Minghao didn’t know how he knew it, but he did. It was suddenly very obvious, now that he’d pulled off the projection of Kim Mingyu the beautiful, rich boy, and replaced it with Kim Mingyu, the ghost-whisperer. "You knew everything about me before we'd even met."

“I did.” He raked his hand through his hair, letting the strands fall back over his eyes. “The spirits told me how to find you."

“Just like they told you that I told Soonyoung?”

Mingyu lifted his head so that he could hold his gaze in his. “I knew that you’d turned on the tracker the minute I reached the house. You wouldn’t have been able to hide anything for long – that’s my territory. They hear and see every secret, and they tell me.”

“Is there even a caretaker? Or was that a lie so that you could talk to them?”

Mingyu shook his head. “The caretaker has shifts. He was supposed to be there, that day. The spirits are more obedient when he’s around because his family’s descended from shamans. But Jisoo lied to me. He guessed I would take you home and told the caretaker to have a day off.”

“Jisoo?”

“One of my friends. They don’t like to share with outsiders.” Mingyu smiled wanly. “They can be quite petty. I should have seen it coming when I talked about you to them so much.”

“So you’re all in this...this thing together,” Minghao observed bitterly. 

“Our ancestors, yes. We’re just the descendants who keep this alive. I told you, we can’t escape this.”

Minghao took the time to glance about the shop, and he noticed a few framed photographs of boys at the age of twelve or thirteen with ear-splitting grinds. One of them was clearly Mingyu. He could recognise Wonwoo, and the others he couldn’t place. He suspected that two of them were Jeonghan and Jisoo, and wondered which of them was this nosy interfering Jisoo. 

Mingyu followed his gaze to the photograph. “He’s the one on the left.”

The one with dark eyes that betrayed his sweet face. Minghao could just about picture how much hostility he would show to him in person. “He doesn’t like me because I’m not one of you?”

“We’re all afraid of our skeletons coming out of the closet,” Mingyu said, swiping a finger across the dusty photo frame. “Jisoo was looking out for me in the only way he knew how.”

“If you hadn’t come back to get me, what would have happened?” Minghao glanced back at his hand fearfully, and he felt cold settle over it, again. 

“I don’t know. They were probably just trying to frighten you.”

“So they did want to harm me?”

“No, _never_. Just to shake you up a little.”

Minghao felt sick. Ghosts and fireflies and jealous wolves for friends who were also whisperers. How could he ever compete with that? He clutched his forearms tightly, feeling the switchblade bounce a little – his lifeline resting on the inside of his sleeve. 

He felt even sicker. He didn’t want to stay here and look at Mingyu anymore. He dropped his head, letting his fringe shield his eyes. 

“What are you thinking now?”

“What do you think I’m thinking?” He spat out. “This is fucking messed up. Your friends could kill me anytime they want. What if your ghosts don’t like me? Then what?”

Mingyu made to move to Minghao, to placate, to plead, but it was getting too claustrophobic. He felt his mind caving in on him, his vision tunnelling to the door, and all he really needed was to get away from this mess, from the source of this mess. Mingyu.

“They're just curious. They would never hurt you, because you're important to me,” Mingyu said, his voice on edge as he read him. “Minghao, _wait_.” He took fast steps to Minghao, the shoes clapping against the tiled floor and reverberating in his head. He couldn’t do this. It was too loud, too crowded, and too unsafe. 

He dug out the switchblade, popping open the blade with shaky hands and held it out to Mingyu. “Don’t touch me.”

“Hao...”

“Don’t fucking touch me.” He felt tears pool at the rim of his eyes, and he wondered if he would make it back alive today. 

Mingyu took a tiny step forward, and Minghao whipped the blade out, swiping out in haphazard slashes. Mingyu caught his hand, yanking the blade out of his measly grip. 

He looked at it like it was just a toy and not sharp steel that could slice through flesh and bone and dumped it on the floor behind him. Minghao had to force himself not to let his eyes follow where it rolled under a cabinet. 

“You don’t need it with me, Minghao. I’ll keep you safe, I promise. You’ll always be safe with me.”

Minghao swallowed, tried to breathe as evenly as he could through the building knot of hysteria leaping up his chest and throat, cutting off his oxygen intake. He didn't think he'd be able to take him down when it came to hand-to-hand combat.

“Get out of my way, Mingyu.” The tears were streaming down uncontrollably, and he rather thought that it was a good thing to show Mingyu how truly affected he was. “I want to go home and I want you to leave me alone. Please.”

Through his glazed eyes, he hardly noticed Mingyu had gotten close enough to clamp his arm around his waist. The lingering notes of coffee hovered in the air – calming and familiar – and he had to fight to keep from caving and molding to Mingyu’s touch. 

“Please don’t leave me,” he whispered against his ear, knocking his head against Minghao’s gently. "I need you. I just wanted you, Minghao,” he sighed. “For once, I just really wanted someone who wasn’t a part of my world. Who didn’t know where I was from, who might just like me for me.”

“But this _is_ part of you, Mingyu. This,” he gestured to the crumbling walls, the photograph of his friends, and thought about the bowed animals, the gleaming shower of lights that washed the ceiling in a spray of shimmering rainbows. “is you. So what if I didn’t know this part of you at first? I’d eventually have to know it, sooner or later.”

“I know,” he shuddered out, mouth pressed against his cheek. “I know. But you were so different. So blunt, always honest with me, and so beautiful. I wanted to have that.”

His lips were soft – softer than Soonyoung’s – when he bent to kiss him. Minghao tasted salt on his lips when he kissed him back, and pushed Mingyu away after allowing him another kiss. 

“Mingyu, I can’t.”

“Wait. Here.” Mingyu bent his head forward, lifting a silver chain from around his neck. There were a whorl of twisted vines that held an emerald stone in the middle. “Wear this. It’s tied to my family, and to my energy. If you wear this, you won’t be disturbed.”

Minghao shook his head. “I don’t want to. That’s like a call sign that I’m with you. They won’t disturb me, but they’ll know that I’m not just anyone. I can’t, Mingyu.”

“Minghao,” Mingyu was stricken with desperation, his hands shaking as he dangled the family heirloom between them. “They’ve already seen you. Touched you. You’re not really safe wherever you go, anymore.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Touched me? Nobody touched me.”

“You felt something cold on your hand in Ansan, didn’t you?”

Minghao froze. A sense of loss and fatigue knotted in his belly, and all the fighting spirit left him in one thunderous strike. The cold that had never really left him since then. He covered it with his left hand. "So?"

“I told you, there’s no running from the magic. You've been touched by Death, now.” He felt the necklace being looped over his neck. “You’re safer with me.” 

He wrapped his arms around Minghao – who was still dazed and petrified – and stroked his hair softly. When he pressed his mouth against his hair, Minghao thought he felt his mouth curve upwards as he burrowed his nose into the top of his head.

***

“You said you were bored. And I can alleviate that boredom. Come with me.” He pulled a little hard on Minghao’s wrist, his fingers like an iron snake coiling tightly around it.

“Ow, ow, that kind of hurts,” he heaved out, but he was still letting himself be dragged out of the safety of the building and out into the street.

Minghao wanted to spend New Years’ bundled up in bed, but Mingyu always had other ideas. Always wanted to keep moving, keep testing the waters. He wondered wearily where this next expedition would lead them to. 

The slow flick of butterfly knives let loose from their latches. A fire dance in the tunnel under the bridge – that was what Mingyu had dragged him into. 

“You can’t come inside – they won’t allow you to. But you can watch.”

Minghao opened his mouth to protest. This was always his first instinct – to leave him high and dry – and fuck Kim Mingyu if he thought he would just let this slide.

“No way. You’re not doing this again. If you’re going to fucking drag me all the way out here then I’m coming with you the whole way. Watching you isn't going to help with the boredom.”

“If you come inside, you might have to fight.” Mingyu’s eyes were black and hard, but he could almost see him bouncing with the thrill of that prospect. 

“Fight? Fight who?”

“Whoever joins. Once they let you in, you need to fight. It’s the rules. But the thing is, we never really know whether they’ve planned for a fight or not when we come. So, I’m not risking you.”

“Why do you even need to fight?” Minghao grumbled. He was really starting to dislike this world that he’d been thrown into. 

“We come here for information. Or deals. Tonight’s the one for the new drug area, and my family wants in. The price is blood. Now pay attention. I’m going to teach you how to protect yourself if I don’t make it, or if someone attacks you while I’m still back there.”

Mingyu placed a switchblade into his palm and curled his hand around Minghao’s hand. He guided the edge of the blade along Minghao’s own arm. “Aim here. The brachial artery, if you can. That’s how you make sure they’re down, and stay down.”

“I can help instead of being a sitting duck, you know.” He whispered feverishly. He didn’t even know what a brachial artery was, much less where it was. In his games, he just needed to slash and his opponent was out for the count. 

They were crouched in a corner at the mouth of the tunnel, the streetlights clipping the pavements in patches of yellow the colour of corn. He wanted to go with Mingyu, he wanted to stop being the one left waiting. 

Mingyu wound a tight grip around his upper arm. He refused to let go until Minghao promised to use the blade, and could accurately mimic where to cut. “Show me, again.”

“Why don’t you just fucking let me come with you so you can stop worrying about me over here.”

“Show me, Minghao.”

He sighed, laid the tip of the blade dutifully against his arm, trying to imitate where he’d said the major artery was. Mingyu nodded, cupped his cheek and ran his thumb across his bottom lip. Then he was dashing into the heart of the tunnel, into the lion’s den. 

Minghao sank fully onto the floor. His palms were sweat-sticky and he glanced at the blade balanced in his palm, and thought how useless it was when left in his hands. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to get a proper grip onto it to slice or stab. 

He tried to peer around the wall but it was hard to make out any of the figures in the darkness. The flickering flames spat an occasional orange glow onto the silhouettes, but they were too fast for Minghao to see which one of the shadowed faces belonged to Mingyu. 

“Grey in the light, blue in the night.”

“Thorns of briar, burnt on a pyre,” Mingyu finished the greeting.

“He’s fine,” one of the hooded people said, and pulled his hood back to reveal his face. There was a deep scar that ran across his left cheek, all the way down to his jaw, ending just shy of his mouth. His eyes were hollow, nose pressed flat against his face, and his lips were thin and an unhealthy purple. 

“You picked a bad night, Kim. We’re drawing blood today to see who gets the pick of the new drug street.”

“Then shouldn’t it be a good night?” Mingyu’s twin canine teeth flashed from behind his upper lip and glinted in the firelight. 

“If you say so,” he grunted. He gestured to the crowd around the fire. “Joining? Chois have first bat.”

“Later,” Mingyu waved the offer off with a lazy flick of his hand. “I want to talk to Kihyun.”

“He’s not here yet. I suggest you join now before it gets to the Jungs. They’re the ones favoured to win.”

Minghao couldn’t hear any part of the conversation, but he recognised which one was Mingyu after the man had thrown his hood off and led them to a separate corner to talk. The tightening of his broad shoulders, the way he seemed to float across the ground – definitely Mingyu. 

“Of course they are,” Mingyu scoffed. “They have fancy weapons. But less technique.”

He swept his hood with a flourish, revealing his own face. “I’m joining.”

Mingyu snuck a trident blade out from his pocket and kissed the tip of the middle one – for good luck, Minghao supposed. The blade twirled between those long, dexterous fingers, pulsing with familiarity, like he’d done this so many times before. He felt a bit of pride well up at that. That this person was his.

“Signal when Kihyun’s here,” he said in a commanding voice, then he was pushing into the thick of the crowd to join in the rapture of the fight. 

He watched as Mingyu danced around his stocky opponent, expertly dealing slashes and blows without exhausting himself. He didn’t think that he would have made it very far – Mingyu was too good. But he glanced at the row of players waiting in line and back to Mingyu. His heart contracted.

_To hell with doing nothing._ Minghao drew his hand up to play with the necklace around his neck. He closed his eyes, imagining the mass of humans clouded over with a sudden rush of mania, diving into the fray to hack each other to bits. Possession. Was it even possible? 

But then, he thought about the fireflies from so many months ago, and Mingyu’s pleased smile when the entire tree had been dotted with their warm glow. 

“Burnt on a pyre,” Minghao whispered, squeezing the emerald in his hand hard, until the vines dug red welts into his palm.

And then he opened his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've arrived at the end of this massive i-don't-really-know-what-this-is, then really, thank you! I feel like there's so much more I could have done with this, but the TIME. Time eluded me. Still...I hope I did it justice.
> 
> If you're wondering about the answer to the Chinese riddle...I'm sorry, I actually don't know it! I came across the question on google, but I really couldn't find an answer after searching the phrase a hundred different ways, so your guess will be as good as mine, ahaha.
> 
> Come talk to me in the comments and twt (after reveals)! And again, Happy Halloween:)


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